The snow had ceased, but only for a time. The sweet, brisk taste of it still hung in the frosty air, and the looming clouds above the Three Horns promised another fall before night. For now, though, a patch of blue sky had opened above the battlements, and the rays of a cold sun glinted on the drifts and icicles and dark mountain stone.
From where he stood, on the walls of Caldmark, Varelis bar Veruna could see to where the empire ended. The fortress held the wide pass that led out from Lake Sacrifice, through the northern Guardians, and then down into the great prairie that stretched all the way to the glaciers and escarpments that the Druanni and Kadoli called mezza’Mehuset, the bastion of the gods. On a clear day from Caldmark’s battlements some keen-eyed legionnaires claimed to see a dark line where those ranges and ice floes began, but on Veruna’s map the escarpment lay five hundred leagues north, and even at the fortress’s height no man’s eye could leap that gap.
What the eye could reach was the Whiteflood, the Uadogan’a to the tribes, the wide, looping, lazy river that ran through the prairie as far east and west as any explorer could follow or mapmaker could chart. That was where the empire’s northern border lay, according to a treaty that sat somewhere in the archives in Rendale’s Castle, with the signature of Jonthen II and the marks of five clan-chiefs affixed. But all those chiefs were almost a century dead, so the parchment’s only value was in the facts on the ground that it memorialized: Both the borderforts along the Whiteflood’s southern bank and the understanding that while herders might bring their aurochs into the southern reaches of the prairie unmolested, if a large-enough armed party of tribesmen crossed the river, they would be met by the legions and destroyed.
This reality did not make the frontier safe, because small parties could easily raid south — especially in winter when the Whiteflood froze. Jonthen had hoped to open the prairie to greater settlement, to estates instead of farms and towns instead of villages, and at that he had mostly failed, as had his successors in more desultory campaigns. There were settlers up here, but not many, not more than five thousand scattered across the vast terrain, and it wasn’t land that legionnaires wanted for their service or the newly-ennobled requested for their fiefs.
So the soldiers up here, in Caldmark and the further forts, were mostly still charged with protecting the lands to their south — Orison and Sacrifice and the gold roads and Rendale, and the Ysani lowlands to the west — from the spears of ambitious clan-chiefs. The prairie still felt like wilderness; on maps the empire ended at the river, but when you stood on the battlements of Caldmark you felt that All Narsil really ended at your back. And in the winter you felt it more starkly — that the fortress in the pass was like a sentry at the door, letting the empire sleep safely until spring.
Or wake to civil war, Veruna thought unhappily.
Pter bobbed up beside him, then, his beard slightly less precise than usual and dark hollows beneath his almond eyes. “M’lord?" he said gently, “will you come down? They are ready for you.”
Veruna lifted a finger to his lips, and the other man fell silent. The wind was rising, keening against the pitted stone, and together they stared out, across the snowswept landscape, toward where the Whiteflood coiled its way across the prairie, a frozen serpent on the grass. Below them the land was hilly, bearded by firs that still showed hints of green beneath the snowfall. A flock of crows burst from one of these hillsides, a dark seething mass that swirled and scudded south, passing high over the fortress with raucous cries that, for a moment, drowned out the whining of the wind.
“It’s always beautiful,” Pter said.
“Beautiful but deadly,” The Old Hound replied. “Before everything went upside down I had word from Fort Ahferth that their patrols were following a band headed southeast of them, toward Megger’s Town. Sounded like small fry, but that’s how we lost those brave boys at Anahwen two years ago …”
“Anbaris is a solid officer and Ahferth’s well-garrisoned. They’ll see the winter through just fine. Can’t worry about them now; other things to think about for us.”
The general laughed sourly. “Like a coronation, you think? A bit of pomp and circumstance to place House of Verna on the Falcon Throne? Well, maybe. Maybe.”
Pter rubbed at his face, worrying at the mole that stood out brown against his pocked flesh. “One step at a time, don’t you think, m’lord?”
“And perhaps it will just be Varelis, First of that Name, if the boy Padrec executes Cresseda before we get there.” He spat sourly into a hummock of snow, staining it with flecks of yellow. “It was not supposed to go like this, you know.”
“It might not be too late to back away. . .”
“Oh, come! Come! Pter, it is far and away too late. I’ve resisted arrest, locked up a loyal servant of the crown, and proven that my soldiers are more loyal to me than to the boy Padrec. You really think they’ll let me slip into exile now? I’m a dangerous man ….”
He was not a traitor. Not a traitor, but a loyalist — loyal like his fathers to an Argosa that was more his motherland than this vast unwieldy thing called “Narsil,” loyal to a ducal house that had always kept its promises to his family, to his blood. He had sworn oaths, secret, fervent oaths that superseded the oaths of the legions. And he had always told himself that if the day came for action, for making good on those secret oaths, the whole empire would benefit as well.
Always — but especially in recent years, especially during the Brethon adventure and his sovereign’s palpable decline.
He sighed heavily and turned to lean against the parapet, looking up the shape of Caldmark, his home these last three years. The keep was Mandoran, smooth and cannily fashioned; the outer walls were built more crudely, from black granite hauled from quarries hidden in the forested hills, and in summer the fortress was a dark scar against the green landscape, a stern sentinel above the blue of Lake Sacrifice.
In winter, though, when the land went bare and then white and Sacrifice froze into a chilly gray — then Caldmark became a grim monarch of the north country, looming over a barren kingdom where crows screamed from fir trees and wolverines spilled rabbit blood across the snow.
“As I said, m’lord, they’re ready,” Pter said hesitantly.
On the towers, the banners, stiffened by frost, thumped against their poles. Narsil's falcon and the white fist on green of Caldmark — and between them, raised by jubilant soldiers just that morning, the red griffin of his own house. For the General! they had shouted. For the Old Hound!
“Eight hundred men of the Falconguard around Rendale, Pter,” he said softly. “A hundred men of the Watch. Maybe two hundred guardsmen for the various houses."
“Probably not enough to hold the city walls,” came the reply. “Not with our three thousand set against them.”
“Five days to reach Rendale, if we push hard.”
“And no one to bring news to his not-yet-majesty Padrec.”
Veruna laughed. It came out as a bark, but then he really was a dog-like man — hard from years of soldiering, but with a thick black beard and shaggy hair and a snout that drooped into a canine softness. His men loved that face, and they loved him. Enough to betray their emperor, it seemed.
“Yes, his highness Padrec, who thought my men would stand by and see me clapped in irons . . . They're good boys, Pter, good boys indeed for what they did this morning.”
Pter nodded. “Most of them have been through blood and fire with you, m’lord.”
“And they'll go through more before this tenday is out. And if Padrec flees south, leaves Rendale, takes the court with him and the dukes, leaves us an empty Castle and capital … our little stab will be civil war, with the house of Verna against the whole empire, and us all alone here in the north.”
The other man shrugged. “It’s the road we've been given, m’lord. And Padrec won't flee — we'll be near the gates before he knows we're coming."
Veruna nodded tightly. “Right you are. That's the spirit — it’ll all be over before the next thaw! So — all’s ready, then? Warrimer and everyone that stood with him locked away and comfortable? And the boys are marshaled?"
“They await your command, sir.”
The sun had gone, the Old Hound realized, and now the stormheads were closer. It was time to be gone — time to toss the dice.
“Well, let's be off, then,” he said, and they went down together to the parade ground and the waiting legions.
The curtains were drawn back, and Alsbet's bedroom lay warming in the winter sun. The princess was propped up on a heap of crimson pillows, with her snow-white quilt pulled up almost to her chest and her fair hair falling loose across her nightgown. She was pale in the sunlight, and there were scarlet outbreaks on the fair skin of her neck.
The bruise on her cheek had faded since Gavian had first seen her in this bed, slumped and stunned-looking after she had been carried up unconscious from the crypt. Now her eyes were open, their blue rimmed with red, and she squinted at her visitors in the brightness pouring through her window.
They stood together, the steward and the soldier. The sister-physician was busy at her table in the anteroom, her red robes rustling as she clicked and clacked with little bottles. Otherwise they were alone.
“Where have you been?” Alsbet asked them — a flat voice, a perfunctory question.
“We were told not to stay,” Aeden answered, haltingly. “Sister Merel said you needed sleep. Gavian has been outside your doors since dawn.”
It was true. The captain had only slept a few hours that night. But then he didn’t need sleep as he once did. His body ached in the cold, it was always tired, but sleep didn’t help with those matters; nothing did. Time was just having its way with him.
“You slept most of yesterday, highness,” Gavian said. “We came in for a time, but you did not seem to recognize us.”
Her gaze was oddly empty, as if she didn’t recognize them still. “I had dreams,” she murmured. “Such strange dreams.”
“What has become of your maids?” Aeden asked. “They were here with you ...”
She flicked with her fingers. “I sent them away. They were … irritating me. Has my brother been here?”
“I don’t know,” Gavian said, though he had seen the prince speaking with the physician in the corridor the previous night. “I mean, I don’t know if he’s been in to see you, highness.”
“Well.” She looked toward the window. There was a pile of books and scrolls on the dresser, with titles written in Brethon, that Aeden had gathered for her.
“I won't be needing those now,” she said. “The gray brothers will be glad to see them again. Though some of them came from Mabon and Ysan, so we shall have to send them back.”
“Alsbet …” Aeden began, an appeal without a clear intention. She snapped her eyes back to him.
“Aeden,” she said. “Gavian. It has been two days? Tell me what has happened. Though I think I know.”
Gavian had brought bad tidings after a battle to his lord, once, in the life of his youth in Trans-Mersana. This was not so different.
“There have been arrests,” he said. “Cresseda and all her men are arrested on suspicion of treason. Other Argosans as well, in the city. Apparently there are arrests all over the empire. No one knows the true details of the plot, or the proof; the dukes have been closeted with your brother and they seem to have raised no strong objections yet. And that is not all.” He spoke quickly so she would not think he was hiding it. “Prince Maibhygon and the Bryghalans are also arrested — or confined, at least, to Blind Tower under guard. Also under suspicion of a plot against the crown.”
“Yes,” she said, and her voice was as un-Alsbet-like as her cold and emptied gaze. “Yes, I did know already. At times I thought my knowledge might be part of the dream. But Padrec told me. You say no one knows the details, but there must be rumor. Rumor must be flying.”
Gavian looked at Aeden uncertainly. Their gazes agreed, the soldier spoke again: “The main rumor is that Maibhygon is accused of murdering your father, highness. And planning to murder your brother. Some say your brother and yourself. That he and Cresseda were in league. That the Bryghalans serve the Black God, that for them this was just a different version of the plan to kill you and your father on the river.”
“Yes,” she said again. “Yes, yes, of course.” There was some sort of murmuring in the anteroom; the physician speaking to someone in the hall. Alsbet’s hands tightened on the blankets. “And as my beloved friends and counselors, what do you believe?”
This time Aeden answered first. “Princess, can you tell us what happened in the crypt? What did your brother tell you of this? What happened to you there?”
“A fainting fit,” said Sister Merel, in the officious voice of a physician, sweeping past the two men in a flutter of scarlet. “A commonplace in my experience, especially for sensitive and intelligent young women, during times of difficulty in their lives.” She stood at the end of the bed, prim and birdlike, certain of herself as the red sisters always were. “You understand, your highness? There is nothing wrong with you save that women must carry more than men, and sometimes it becomes too much for us. At which point a little rest should be all it takes to make you right as running water.”
“So she will be all right?” Aeden said.
The sister looked at him dismissively. “I have said as much to his majesty Padrec every time he has visited her, on my honor as a servant of Raphiel. I have been thirty-seven years a physician and never known a young woman to die of a fainting fit.”
“Padrec … he has been here?”
Sister Merel squeezed her lips into something like a smile. “Indeed he has, my princess. And more than that, he has come again now. He asked to be sent for when you were ready. I delayed him, told him that you are with your men, but of course one does not refuse an emperor.”
“One does not,” Alsbet said sharply. “But I may.” She closed her eyes for a moment and drew a slow breath. “No,” she said. “No. No purpose … Gavian and Aeden will remain, but tell my brother that I will receive him.”
Padrec came in alone, mourning black exchanged for Montair blue, his bearing stiff and uncertain. His gaze was cold to the men; toward Alsbet it was hungry, anxious, strange. The physician slipped away, and he took her place beside the bed. His sister let him take her hand without either of them speaking, her face a mask of wan beauty.
“Alsbet,” he said, “I’ve been often here. I’m glad to see — the sister says you should be all right. She says you aren’t sick, and if you have a few days of rest you may be completely better. Alsbet, I was very worried, but you will be well.”
“Truly these are happy tidings, brother,” she said. “I am touched by your concern.”
“Alsbet, I am very …” he began, and then broke off with a glance at Aeden and Gavian. “I would rather speak with you alone.”
Gavian moved automatically, the soldier’s instinct, but Alsbet halted him with a look.
“Of course you have the right, but I would prefer to keep them here. They have always kept me safe, you know, and it is good to have men here who love me, who are true.”
“Kept you safe?” Padrec’s eyes flashed, but he kept his voice controlled. “We would all keep you safe, Alsbet. It’s to keep you safe that I’ve …”
“Yes? That you’ve acted, while I’ve lain abed? Did everything go according to plan then? Is your throne secure from all the traitors?”
“There are — we’ve taken steps. There is still much to be done.”
“But the prince of Bryghala is locked away where he cannot hurt any more emperors of Narsil?”
“Alsbet, I wish that things were different,” he said, and she laughed bitterly.
“Please. You can deceive yourself, if you like, but leave me out of it. You aren't sorry at all — not at all. You have your war, now, don't you? A nice excuse to ride against Bryghala? To have the war my father took from you?”
“He was my father too, Alsbet.”
A hand was clenched on the quilt, but her voice remained flat and brutally controlled. “You can say that until doomsday, brother. But Maibhygon did not kill our father, and I know it — and you know it as well.”
They were both in profile to Gavian, with the sun from the far windows bright behind them. Their shapes, their voices, were very like their parents … though the captain had never been privy to any real conflicts between queen and emperor. He was glad of that, glad not to have had to practice stoicism while a woman he worshiped argued with her husband. This variation was difficult enough.
He did not look at Aeden. He knew the young man would hold his tongue through this. But what if today were just the beginning? The mood of the Castle had darkened somewhat with Edmund’s drinking and decline, but the shadow had mostly fallen on Alsbet and through her on them. Now, though, there was a feeling in the halls that reminded Gavian of his last days in Antiala, before his exile — a feeling of storms building, a sense of impending disaster that every man and woman, lord and stablehand, could feel.
Padrec’s voice was strained, almost self-pitying. “… can’t you listen to me, sister? Why can’t you consider believing me? Is it so hard? Alsbet, what cause have I given you … ”
“Because I know my prince, Padrec,” she told him. “Because our father's death was an accident, not murder — and you know that, but you’ve decided to use it for your own …”
“We will have proof!”
“I do not believe it!” she snapped back, and then shuddered against the pillows. “This is pointless. I am very tired, and I find you difficult to bear. So if you truly care about my health, my delicate condition, you will leave me now.”
“Alsbet! I am the em –” He checked himself. "I am your brother. You cannot be angry at me forever, and you cannot just send me away when I am trying to explain …”
“I am doing just that,” she broke in, “and if you do not go in a moment I shall call for Sister Merel, and then after that perhaps I shall begin to shriek. And no, in point of fact, Padrec, we do not need to talk, not now, not about what you told me. At the moment, frankly, it does not feel like we ever need to talk again.”
He stood there a moment longer, and then, beaten, made his retreat.
Behind him, the sun was warm, the men were silent, and after a time Alsbet began quietly to weep.
Within the walls of the council chamber, in a room warmed by two fires built high at either end, Padrec began to feel clean again. His men gathered around the long table looked up as he entered and dropped their heads, a sign of respect — and they must respect him now, he realized, letting the problem of his sister fade, because he had proved himself … why, he had done great things these two days! He had defeated a powerful enemy without bloodshed — without anything more than a few drawn swords! He had unmasked a conspiracy, he had caught his father's killer, he had become a figure of righteous imperial wrath, without even the benefit of a coronation.
And there they were, his friends and his advisors who were also his tools (because that was how an emperor had to think), arrayed at his service around the table — his official council and his unofficial one, the older men who had regarded him as just a boy and the younger men who had thought of him as just a comrade. Arellwen and Gaddel and Borkji and Clava and Paulus and Elbert and Dunkan: They had served him together in this enterprise, the first of his reign, and it had all gone smoothly …
Nothing ever proceeds perfectly according to plan, Aengiss had insisted, with that dour stormcrow gleam in his eye, but maybe this time it would.
It was two nights since his sister’s fainting fit in the catacombs, two nights since Paulus and the Falconguard invaded Cresseda’s rooms, ransacked them, and finding no incriminating papers had taken her seal to forge documents they would need for a proper trial. Cresseda herself was first confined in Matheld’s Tower and then returned to her own ransacked chambers.
At the same time, a contingent of legionnaires escorted Maibhygon and the rest of the Bryghalan party to their rooms in the upper reaches of Blind Tower, where they were confined under armed guard. There was no resistance.
The weather thawed briefly the next day, and the skies were blue and almost cloudless when Padrec faced the dukes and presented them with the proofs of conspiracy: Paulus’ testimony, and a collection of hastily-forged Argosan documents implicating Maibhygon. Thinking, perhaps, of the soldiers standing grim-faced at every corner of the Castle, the dukes agreed that Cresseda would have to stand trial, and that the treaty with Bryghala could be reasonably declared void. Their emperor thanked them, and each lord was escorted back to his chamber by a contingent of legionnaires.
Again, no difficulties.
The messenger birds had gone out earlier, on the morning of the funeral, before any other moves were made, to legion captains across the empire, bearing Argosan names deemed likely by Aengiss. Twenty-four in all, to be relieved of commands and postings and confined pending an imperial investigation, while official proclamations were to be read in squares the empire over.
No messages had returned as yet save one, but it was by far the most important: It came from Caldmark bearing tidings that Aengiss’s man in the fortress, the castellan Harald Warrimer, had succeeded in relieving the Old Hound of his command, and Veruna would be sent south to Rendale under escort.
“I think we’ve done it!” Dunkan had said jubilantly.
And hadn’t they? Of course it was not complete, because of course Cresseda denied everything, with cold hauteur, and she couldn’t be put to the question, she would demand a trial at the hands of the priest-inquisitors, as was her right. But Padrec had the right to put the men (and a few women) on Aengiss’s list to the question, and if they broke that would confirm the existence of the conspiracy — and that would be enough to carry Cresseda’s trial, surely, and together the conspiracy and the testimony would also prove the last part, the tale of Maibhygon’s complicity, no matter how fervently it was denied.
Yes, it had worked. He placed his palms flat on the council table, feeling the fire warm him from behind, watching his father’s men and thinking that they were his men now, because he had proven himself, proven his power, proven that he was fit - to – rule.
Fit, and unchallenged. For who could oppose him now? The boy Ambarian in Argosa? The Bryghalans? Let them try. He ruled in Narsil. He and no one else at last.
It was an intoxicating sensation, strong enough to burn away the clinging thoughts of his sister's rebuke. Yes, very well, he had lied — had placed an innocent man in irons — had sinned, as a scrutiny would put it — but he had done it all for the greater good, not of Padrec of Montair, but of the empire, which was larger than any one man! Why, simple honesty was easy, moral probity was easy, priggish adherence to the dictates of the Law was easy … it was simple to always do what was right, to keep one’s eyes fixed on the next life, to cultivate purity of soul. That was the path of the common man, the path of women like his sister. But the great man, the emperor, had to be willing sometimes to go beyond common, easy morality … to sin, yes, but for a greater good, for the empire that he was sworn to serve.
His sister did not understand that, could not — she was a woman, after all — but he was that man. The man to do the necessary thing.
The door banged open, and Aengiss entered in a swirl of black, his face bearing a look of cold satisfaction.
“Another one for the lists, it appears,” his general said, dropping his cloak on a chair, claiming a place between Paulus and Arellwen at one end of the table.
“Who is it?” Elbert said sharply.
Padrec said nothing, only waited. A great man was not impatient.
“Lord Rell has left the city,” Aengiss said. “Falconguardsman at the gate saw him ride south in haste, but it took half the day before that fact made its way up to someone with enough wit to mention it to me.”
Rell had handed in his resignation the day previous. I had only one task, the Fenman told Padrec then in a husky, guilty voice. To keep your throne secure from plots such as these. I have failed you, and you should find another man.
“Why would he leave?” Dunkan asked, ever a beat slow.
“Why didn’t we close the gates?” Elbert asked angrily, looking at Gaddel. “Why are we letting anyone leave the city until the rest of the birds are back?”
The Lord of the City hesitated, but Aengiss came in smoothly: “No, no, Elbert, this is much better. Had we closed the gates, Rell would have simply stayed, betting on our ignorance. Which would have been a winning gamble, for a time — I did not suspect him.”
“I did, a little,” Clava said with a light and nervous laugh. “But as I am Argosan and therefore suspect, I feared that naming him without proof would seem like the sort of thing a guilty man would do.”
“There is no point in your being on this council if you fear to tell me your suspicions,” Padrec said.
Clava dropped his head and said: “Then I will tell you that I believe him to be a weak man, and I am sure that if we put him to the question he will tell us all he knows.”
“And we will have that chance,” Aengiss said. “I have ordered a patrol after him, and Paulus will see that a bird is dispatched to Aldermark to block his path.”
“If we can trust Aldermark,” Arellwen said quietly.
“Trust Captain Areth, you mean? We went over this in the lists — there is nothing in his record or lineage to make him a plausible worry.”
“No,” the chancellor agreed, “I would not have thought of him. But one of his adjutants is Argosan …”
“Are we all to be suspect?” Clava murmured.
“ … let me finish, Merdu,” Arellwen said. “Also, he himself is a Fenman like Dethferd — like Lord Rell. Their families have connections. And if Argosan silver bought the Lord of the Secretariat we must be more generally suspicious.”
“Should we add the captain and his adjutant to the list?” Borkji asked. “As a foray, to see what he does?”
“No,” Aengiss said. “Aldermark’s garrison is no threat. We have cast our net wide enough for now; we need information before we go any further with proscriptions.”
“And we need a plan for my beloved Argosa, still,” Paulus said. “Whatever those birds say when they come back.”
By now the feeling of righteous satisfaction was slipping from Padrec, so he made a bid for firmness, certainty:
“I have a plan,” he told them. “We will send Benfred to Argosa.”
Aengiss looked surprised but not disapproving. “In what capacity?”
“In the capacity of …” Padrec groped “… of fact finder. And imperial representative. The capacity of being a Montair, and my uncle, or near enough. And the capacity of bringing a legion from Valemark into Argosa with him, to show our strength.”
“And in the capacity of removing House Verna from power?” This was Arellwen, pressing gently.
“If that seemed necessary. But we have no idea, do we, how far beyond Cresseda this goes? Perhaps we can be magnanimous. Let the boy keep the duchy, send his great-aunt into exile, with everybody she touched purged. Let Ambarian know that he holds it on sufferance, that one false move and our patience will run out.”
He liked the sound of his own voice, talking like this. “But really we will have no idea of what must be done, until these arrests and questionings come to fruition. So in the meantime we need eyes there, an embodiment of my authority. To play the same part as Alaben in Brethony — a part you always said Benfred should have played, didn’t you, Aengiss?”
The general inclined his head. “Benfred is by far the wiser of your father’s cousins. But he nurses his failures and resentments. And like me, he is no longer young.”
“He does know Argosa a bit,” Arellwen said meditatively. “In his own youth, when all those marriages were being arranged, he was there a great deal.”
“Well, until he wrecked one of those marriages,” Clava said with a mild snort. “Running off with his northern girl — his name isn’t appreciated at the Rose Palace.”
“He doesn’t need to be appreciated, but he does need an actual Argosan by his side for such a mission,” Aengiss said. “And our list of likely emissaries is somewhat thin.”
“I am of course his majesty’s to serve,” Paulus said, “but given my unusual role in this whole business I’m not sure I would be welcomed either.”
“I suppose it must be me, then?” Clava sighed. “Back to the viper’s pit to prove that I don’t belong on a list? I can’t imagine anything finer. But which of you bright lads wants to keep the books while I’m getting assassinated down south?”
“From what I’ve heard your services are irreplaceable,” Aengiss said, “but if you spend a few months away Elbert might make a likely understudy.”
The young lord looked startled but pleased, while Clava exchanged a glance with Borkji whose meaning seemed transparent: This is how they replace us, then.
“All well and good,” Arellwen said, “but if Benfred refuses, as he refused to go to Brethony, we may need to send you, Aengiss.”
This was said coolly, casually, but with a touch of counter-maneuver layered in.
“My uncle won’t refuse,” Padrec said. “My father made requests of him. But this, this will be” — he let himself savor the phrase – “an imperial command.”
The next day, under glowering skies, Benfred Montair found himself drinking in a tavern near the city’s northern gate, at the opposite end of the Great Way from the gate through which Lord Rell had fled the prior morning. His thoughts were in the same place as the vanished Lord of the Secretariat: With every flare of liquor on his gorge, he felt the attraction of taking a fast horse as far as the road went or a fast boat even further, as far as he could get from his uncrowned sovereign’s reach.
He had prepared himself for triumph and for failure, for death or torture and even for his own coronation. But he had not prepared himself for this strange half-existence, this terrible uncertainty about whether he was doomed or safe. It was if he had followed the famous gambler to the casino table, placed his bet beside hers, and then watched the guards seize her money and hustle her away — and all the while his own coins were sitting there, gleaming and obvious to him, and nobody seemed to notice.
Could he pocket them again and stroll away casually? Should he make a bolt for the casino doors? If he stayed perfectly still, might he somehow remain safe?
Here was what he knew for certain: Cresseda had fallen because in her pride she hadn’t anticipated that her own prized asset might play her false, and whatever that asset knew of the plot, Padrec and Aengiss and the council knew as well. If Cresseda was as cautious as she claimed to be, that might be little enough; if the whole plot was as compartmentalized as she had promised, then Paulus might not have known about his role. And it also might, might, make sense for her to deny everything rather than try to implicate him — especially since by declining to reveal his share in the treason, she might tacitly blackmail him into pleading for leniency on her behalf.
But there were going to be more arrests, there would be more revelations, and someone besides Cresseda had to know about his role. Did Varelis bar Veruna know? What political situation had he been told would await him once he marched his legions into Rendale? What allies had Cresseda told him they would have? Yes, Veruna had to know, didn’t he? In which case even if Benfred were safe for now, he might have only the time it took for the Old Hound to be escorted south from Caldmark — meaning another day or two at most …
But maybe Veruna hadn’t been told about his role, maybe the Old Hound like the duchess would declare his innocence rather than giving up whatever he might know. And meanwhile in the next day or two Benfred himself would have to decide whether to leave Rendale, not at a desperate gallop under cover of night, but as an emissary charged with rooting out precisely the treason he had committed.
It had been such a strange moment, in the council chamber the prior evening, to have Padrec tell him what they had in mind, to hear himself say, of course I will, all while watching every face in the room for any hint that this was some trap or masquerade.
He had seen nothing, not in Padrec’s eyes then, nor from Aengiss and Arellwen and Merdu bar Clava afterward, when they dined together and discussed all the political problems he was likely to face in Argosa even if there wasn’t open rebellion. He walked away from the meal certain that they didn’t suspect him, went back to his chambers and slept for four hours and awoke convinced that they were trying to entrap him, then managed to fall into a second sleep and awoke certain again that they knew nothing, that they were sending him to Argosa sincerely.
Which was still what he thought, sitting in the inn’s common room drinking with Uffish and Edme, his guard captain and his huntsmistress, who together with a party of trusted Meringholt men-at-arms had been ensconced in the inn since the day before Winter’s Eve.
Had all gone as planned, they would have ridden south from the city days ago, too small a party to be much noticed but large enough to seize two of the birdposts between Rendale and Aldermark, temporarily cutting off the city from the nearest legion fortress to the south.
They had been eager for it, which had not particularly surprised him. Like calls to like, and Benfred in his sour retreat from politics had drawn servants who likewise felt somewhat cheated by their own careers. Uffish was the bastard son of a minor Fen baron, too minor to provide for a son born on the wrong side of the sheets, and his resentment had spurred him to a successful career in the legions, from which he had retired at forty as a leftenant. But then his pension bought him land west of Sheppholm that was ruined by flooding when one of Duke Eldred’s diking plans went awry, and the recompense from Sheppholm was meager. So Uffish had come to Benfred’s service twice dispossessed, at least in his own mind, and this made the duke and the soldier a natural pair, with the solidarity of the disappointed.
Edme, pale with a long nose and deep-set eyes and ivory stripes all through her brown hair, had come bearing resentments specific to her sex. Her father had been Felcester’s chief huntsman, and disappointed in his sons he had passed his skills on to his only daughter. This was an ambiguous gift which upon his death sent her off to a series of unsatisfying employments, working for noblemen eccentric enough to accept a woman who wore breeches and could down a stag from horseback in a position of importance. She had been forced out of posts when other servants revolted, pushed out by suspicious wives, and run away from lords who expected her to be a mistress in every meaning of the word. And so she had ended up, eventually, in Meringholt, with a lord whose had neither a wife nor expectations of a romance nor servants who fancied themselves important enough to tell their master what to do.
Well — perhaps that was too self-serving and too pat. She was a handsome woman even in her leathers, and while he had not precisely expected them to become lovers it would not have happened, as it did within a few months, if the thought had never slipped into his mind. But still he was unlike other lords (he told himself), unlike the grabbing, lustful ones, because he and Edme were only lovers for a time, and their relationship had settled into something based simply on loyalty and mutual respect.
And if, in the brief time when she had fallen pregnant, before her age did its work and the child was lost, he had imagined something more … well, that was as much in the past as any of the other sorrows of his disappointed life.
Now it was Edme who broke the drink-lubricated silence they were sharing.
“Any sudden revelations?” she said in her low voice, raising her glass as if in a mocking toast.
Uffish, who had been watching the common room, turned to her with his sucking-on-a-lemon face. “Aye, the Archangel Uriel just spoke to me and said that I’ll be captain of the Falconguard before the tenday is out.”
“Lucky for you,” she said. “But the Archangel Raguel came to me last night and said I’d be affianced to Padrec by his feastday, so I’ll be giving you orders.”
Benfred smiled tightly. “I hope you’ll remember your old master fondly in your new eminences.”
Uffish made a lordly gesture. “We’ll send you a modest living in whatever Skalbarder city takes you in.”
“On that, at least, I have a thought,” said Esme. “Which is that Argosa is closer to Trans-Mersana than Rendale is to the Skalbard cities. And the climate in Antiala is finer than the weather in Belgard.”
The captain snorted. “I thought you were becoming a princess, not a geographer.”
“All I’m saying,” she returned, “is that going to Argosa as an imperial emissary doesn’t preclude decamping for even warmer climes.”
“But going to Argosa with a Valemark legion might preclude decamping,” Benfred said, “if the legion commander suddenly gets instructions to put me in irons.”
“True. But it lets us start moving in the direction of the empire’s borders without immediately making the Castle suspicious.”
“Twice a tenday to Argosa,” Uffish said. “Anything could change.”
“Much more than twice a tenday to the Skalbard cities too! And we don’t know what we’ll find at the Rose Palace. We might have the chance to turn our cloaks and join Ambarian in rebellion even if the game goes against you up here.”
This was a revelation about Edme: she liked the game. She wanted to keep playing, even with all the odds against them, even though she could melt away more easily than he could. She had ambitions, she liked sharing a “we” with her master, even in the shadow of the headsman’s ax …
Uffish was less eager. “We show up with an army and a mandate from his majesty and then when his grace gets arrested we run to Ambarian and say help us, help us, we was on your side all along? I don’t think much of those southron ponces but I think they’d have the sense to laugh at us.”
“So you’re still for just bolting,” Benfred said heavily.
“I’m for living,” Uffish said. “Empire’s a big place, going to be a lot on their minds, Edme and I know our way around the world, doesn’t seem hard for us to get clear so long as we can clear Aldermark. That just means getting to the first birdpost, like in our old plan, and shutting it down so that none of their pigeons or ravens get through for a few days. Then we’re in the Heart and we’ve got seven directions to choose.”
But was Benfred for living? He hadn’t been looking forward to growing old as Duke of Meringholt. Would he look forward to his declining years as a hunted man, or an exile in some southern court? Wasn’t the whole reason for this gamble the fact that he had preferred a traitor’s death to a slow, pointless descent?
The others were still arguing, but there was a noise rising from outside the inn, and he turned to look through the door and, seeing a hustle of men toward the outside, rose and gestured to his servants and went with the crowd out into the street.
The action was above them, where the paved street rose and widened into a cobbled semicircle, fringed by inns and smithies and farriers, around the city’s northern gate. The space was usually sparsely peopled in wintertime, since little traffic came southward from the mines once the snows began. But now there was a gathering there, a shifting throng, and rearing above them on horseback a figure who looked dimly familiar to Benfred, a redhaired youth in the remains of a legionnaire’s cloak, who was trying to pull away from the restraining hands around him, the Falconguardsmen at the gate.
“Looks like they need someone to exercise some authority,” Uffish said, catching up to Benfred with Edme close behind him, and the Duke of Meringholt made a decision and gestured to them to follow, and together they shouldered through the crowd with half-drawn swords, with Uffish shouting “make way! make way! make way for his grace Benfred Montair! make way you sheep make way!” until they had forged a path through to the knot of Falconguardsmen and the man on horseback arguing with the soldier who held his bridle.
When the horseman looked at Benfred he knew who it was — Arellwen’s boy, Lethen who had been there at Winter’s Eve, a legionnaire somewhere in the north …
The boy knew him as well. “Your grace!” he cried. “Lord Benfred! Tell them they must let me through! Tell them to let me through, tell them I must get to the Castle …”
The legionnaires, deferential at his coming, let him reach the boy. Lethen’s eyes were wild, his breath ragged, his gear ill-used. He leaned down to Benfred, sweat-soaked red hair falling toward his eyes, and gripped the duke’s outstretched hand.
“We must tell them!” he cried, still in a pant. “We must tell them the Old Hound is coming!”
Earlier that same afternoon Alsbet rose from her bed and went down from her room to the bailey. She put on a heavy cloak trimmed with fox fur, with a deep hood to hide her face. When Sister Merel tried to interpose herself – may I send a maid with you, at least, Highness? — she brushed the physician aside, and in the end there was nothing the sister could do but let her go.
Padrec was closeted with his council, so the nervous sister went to Gavian, who went to Aeden, and they clattered together out into the frosty late-afternoon and tried to steer their princess back inside. But when she refused and asked them to leave her, there was nothing they could do either save obey. Then she walked silently around the Castle, past South Tower, the main bailey, Matheld’s Tower, Blind Tower with its Falconguard keepers and hidden prisoners, the east bailey, Burnt Tower . . . and so reached her starting place, Roaberd’s Tower, and began the circuit once again.
Glum and silent, Aeden and Gavian shadowed her progress. Gavian was half-afraid that she would say something to the legionnaires holding Maibhygon prisoner, that she would demand to see him … and yet he also found himself half-hoping that she would, if only to give them a sign of life. But the princess hardly spared Blind Tower’s sentries a glance as she passed them once, and again, and yet once more, her eyes on her path, her hair gleaming gold in the hard winter light.
“Do we think he really did it?” Aeden said. “What are you hearing?”
“Hush,” Gavian said curtly, as they passed a stiff-necked soldier staring out westward from his post. Then, after a moment — “Have a care who hears you now. We don’t know what turns the game will take.”
"She says … Padrec says that they have proof.”
“I don’t doubt they have something. But it also seems a little too neat and a little too complicated at once.”
“You mean that –” They passed another sentry. “You mean that there’s no reason for Argosa and Bryghala to work together toward … ”
“Toward what, yes, that’s one question. You have the mind for history, not I, so maybe you have an idea.”
“My idea is that it’s more obvious how it benefits Padrec to be rid of a marriage bargain that he never wanted.”
“Mine as well.”
Another sentry, another pause.
“And the marriage is gone, then.”
Gavian laughed mirthlessly. “Don't tell me you’re pleased about that.”
“No. I’m not pleased. I’m not.” It sounded like the young man was talking himself into a hard truth.
They were on the northeast of the Castle now, looking over the white and brown of winter countryside. The sinking sun was obscured by tattered clouds, but it still burned on snow-spattered stubble and leafless forest, turning the tufts and tree-trunks a harsh amber. There were glints of pondwater between the branches and a stand of birches gleamed like ivory.
“Feels like it’s been a long winter already, doesn't it?” Aeden said.
They turned a corner and walked south along the east wall, still shadowing their princess. As they came around, for the fourth time, to the main courtyard, the Castle gates were open, and a crowd had gathered. Voices rose, a buzz and then a roar, and Aeden and Gavian lost sight of Alsbet and went down hastily toward the commotion.
The princess stood on the fringes of the crowd. A few people noticed her; not many, not in the depths of her hood. This was a pleasant sensation — being unimportant, unrecognized. She could nurse her misery, float inside her emptiness, and watch.
Not that there was much to see. The crucial figures had come and gone — a party from the city gates, soldiers and her uncle Benfred, hustling someone, a messenger, another soldier, through the Castle gate and courtyard and up into the keep. But they had left behind news, or the rumors that were the next best thing
down from the river road
the Chancellor’s boy
saw what was happening
Veruna’s men
only a little ways behind
passed the Shallows
must be to free the duchess
A pair of Falconsguardsmen were trying, ineffectually, to clear the buzzing crowd. A group of adjutants came clattering down from the keep, cleaved a path through the pack, spoke to the soldiers, and then turned for the stables; the soldiers abandoned their crowd-clearing efforts and moved to the gates, swinging one of the two heavy portals closed, keeping the other open. Then the heavy sound of horse intruded — the sound of the adjutants’ return, mounted now, making for the gate and the city beyond, which split the crowd and sent part of it spilling backward, pushing Alsbet back as she tried to remain on the outskirts, back into the shadow of the keep.
Across the heads around her she caught a glimpse of Gavian and Aeden pushing through and against the crowd, obviously looking for her, and she slipped back a little further, into a space between two buttresses — and another shift in the crowd sent another figure stumbling back with her, a figure in blue, slim and cowled.
The figure turned to her, began an apology, and then her veiled face rose to Alsbet’s hooded eyes and she dropped in a hasty curtsy —
“ – highness, I’m so sorry …”
She knew the voice: It was Fidelity beneath the veil, the Jophielite sister — one of the young ones had felt almost like her friends, in some curious and temporary way. There were other sisters closer to the gate, blue flashes in the moving quilt of people. Fidelity seemed to have been cut off from them; she seemed a little more than startled to have encountered Alsbet here. The princess touched her arm reassuringly, though she didn’t particularly want to share space or words.
“No need for the curtsy,” she said. “I don’t especially want to be recognized. You should get back to your sisters …”
“I should, I should,” Fidelity said, looking at Alsbet with a strange stare. “Are you all right, highness? Do you know what’s happening here?”
“From what I’ve grasped, apparently we may soon be at war.” She sounded cold and peculiar saying it, but then that was how she felt.
“Oh! Oh — surely not! Are they — are they closing the gates?”
They were: The horsemen had passed, more soldiers had joined the others, and the courtyard was being cleared in earnest. Alsbet glimpsed Aeden and Gavian again, and knew she would either have to call to them or make her own way back up into the keep, if she didn’t want to be accidentally manhandled by her brother’s soldiers.
“We should move from here, Fidelity,” she said, in a tone meant to suggest that they should move separately.
“Yes, highness,” the sister said, her voice strange. “But highness, forgive my presumption, but will you — can you take me with you?”
“Take you — we can make sure you’re safe — take you where … ?”
“I need … I prayed, highness, but I never expected … may I speak with you? Not here, but somewhere safe?”
More soldiers, Gavian and Aeden closer, they had seen her … and what pointlessly unimportant thing could Fidelity possibly want?
“Inside?” she said, unhappily.
“Yes — someplace quiet . . . someplace secret."
“It’s a secret?”
Fidelity’s voice caught. “I’m afraid it’s a great one, highness. A great one.”
Now Gavian loomed up behind her, Aeden with him, and the sister turned and half-jumped into another curtsy.
“Captain,” she said. “Angels be with you.”
“Bless you, Sister,” Gavian said kindly. “Can we help you get clear of this mess? Are you all right? And you, highness?”
“She’s well and I’m well,” Alsbet said wearily, not bothering to hide her exasperation. “Wonderfully well, and she has something to tell me. And it’s a great secret."