for backrests. Another one snored on the folded camp blanket, his pudgy hands clasped on his belly. The last rested boots fine enough for a lordling on Mykkael’s straw-stuffed hassock, uncaring whether the bronze caps on his heels might scratch the painted leather.
The captain might ignore those self-absorbed oversights. But not the barebones necessity, that the high stool by the trestle he required to relieve his scarred knee was currently unavailable. The Prince of Devall’s accredited envoy sat there, an older man with the arrogant ease ingrained by born privilege and crown office. His back was turned. The furred hem of a costly, embroidered robe lapped at his neatly tucked ankles, and his barbered head tilted with the air of a man absorbed by illicit reading.
The pain hounded Mykkael to a split-second choice, and efficiency overrode nicety. He drew his sword.
The grating slide of steel leaving scabbard whipped the dignitary to his feet. His raw leap of startlement whirled him around as the captain limped into the room, then sent him in stumbling retreat from a weapon point dulled by hard use.
Each dent, each scratch, each pit etched by weather lay exposed in the flare of the candles.
The servant on the stores chest gave a shrill squeak and dropped the polishing cloth in his lap.
‘Not to worry.’ Mykkael flashed his teeth, not a smile, snapped the cloth off the boy’s trembling knee, then hooked his vacated stool just in time. Since his last, staggered stride towards collapse would be seen as a loutish breach of diplomacy, he turned the effect to advantage. ‘This is a northern-forged longsword, as you see. Not a shaman’s weapon, that must be appeased by the taste of living flesh when it’s bared. I’ve only drawn it for cleaning, besides.’
While the High Prince’s delegation eyed his bared blade with incensed apprehension, Mykkael met and searched six flinching glances one after the next, without quarter. ‘Relax. Ordinary steel means nobody bleeds.’
As the dignitary smoothed down his ruffled clothes, and the servants nursed their shocked nerves, the garrison captain granted them space. He looked down, let them stare as they pleased while he scrounged after his oil jar. The interval confirmed his suspicion that his papers had been disarranged. So had his quill pens, the keep’s books, the ground pigments for inks, and his boxes of spare fletching and broadheads. Every belonging he kept on the trestle had been callously fingered and moved.
In deflected pique, Mykkael dipped the cloth and began to attack the rust on his weapon. The white snakeroot fibres quickly turned colour. To the untutored eye, the stains would appear indistinguishable from dried blood.
Soon enough, he was gratified by excitable whispers behind the servants’ cupped hands. While the dignitary dared a mincing step forward and floundered to salvage diplomacy, Mykkael scarcely regretted the uproar aroused by his ornery leg. Dog-tired, in itching need of a bath, he allowed his ill humour to ride him. ‘Since you didn’t come down from the Highgate for tea, what can the garrison do for you?’
Gold chains flashed as the foreigner peered down his cosseted nose. Mykkael captured the moment, as the watery, pale eyes flickered over his person, and dismissed him. The man’s shaved, lowland features showed his transparent thought: that Devall’s greater majesty owed no grace of respect to desert-bred stock, bound by poor fortune to accept the paid service of an isolate mountain kingdom. Devall’s suave overture would be dutifully delivered, though every word would ring hollow.
‘His Highness, for whom I stand as crown advocate, wished to offer his assistance with the search to find Princess Anja. Armed men can be spared from his personal retinue, and gold, as need be, to loosen those tongues you might find reluctant to talk.’
Mykkael raised his eyebrows, his attention apparently fixed on his work with the sword. ‘They’d crawl through the sewers at my command?’
The advocate stiffened.
The movement snapped Mykkael’s head up. His brown eyes shone like hammered bronze in the excessive flood of the candlelight. ‘Ah, there, don’t take affront. Gold braid and velvet won’t suit, I do realize. Why not offer Devall’s guardsmen to Taskin?’
Unfazed by the servants’ skewering regard, Mykkael watched, unblinking, while a man who was not thinking civilized words maintained his mask of state dignity. ‘Commander Taskin has been offered assistance as well. In his Highness’s name, I can say that gold braid and velvet are of trifling concern beside the royal bride’s safety.’
‘I agree.’ Mykkael raised his sword, and swung towards the nearest candle to sight down the business edge. He set down the rag, then recovered the whetstone he also used as a paperweight. ‘Tell your prince his generosity has my heartfelt thanks. If Sessalie’s garrison requires his assistance, his men, or his bullion, I will inform him by way of Commander Taskin.’
Devall’s envoy pursed sour lips. ‘You don’t care for her Grace’s security, outsider?’
Mykkael took his time, primed the whetstone with oil, then ran it in a ringing hard stroke down the length of his blade. ‘King Isendon, her father, cares very much. I work in his name.’ Another stroke; the battered weapon’s exceptional temper sang aloud with ungentle warning. ‘Better that his Highness of Devall should be reminded not to forget that.’
‘You were a mercenary, before this,’ the delegate observed in contempt.
‘Proud of it,’ Mykkael agreed, reasonable. Proud enough to know, in Sessalie’s case, that the keys to a kingdom were not in his purview to sell. ‘Are you done here?’
‘Apparently so.’ The royal advocate snapped irritable fingers and rousted his bevy of servants. The industrious one elbowed his fellow awake. The others rose, yawning and scattering the pillows. As his indolent retinue assembled about him, the dignitary bestowed a crisp bow, then gathered his robes and swept out. The ruffle of air stirred up by his exit streamed the candles, and wafted the sickly sweet odour of hyacinth.
Mykkael swore under his breath with brisk feeling. Then he braced his left hand on the trestle and pushed himself back to his feet. He was still snuffing candles when Vensic arrived, bearing a flat item wrapped in a quilt.
‘Come in, the door’s open,’ Mykkael snapped, resigned.
‘Breached, more like.’ The good-natured officer of the keep cat-footed inside, sniffed once, then grinned in farm-bred appreciation over the melange of bog reek and perfume. ‘You asked for something from the palace?’
Mykkael turned his head, saw the package brought up from the wardroom, then nodded. ‘A portrait. Her Grace’s likeness, don’t handle it carelessly’
Vensic noted the scattered sheets on the trestle, frowned, then settled for propping his burden on top of the rumpled pallet. ‘I see now why that dignitary left looking singed.’
‘In the hands, or the tongue?’ Mykkael finished his rounds, reached the stool, parked his leg. ‘No shame in him, sadly. Only self-righteous contempt.’ Since his fingers were trembling too severely to light the oil lamp, he was forced to waste, and leave the last candle burning.
‘You should rest,’ Vensic suggested in tentative quiet.
‘Not just yet.’ Mykkael clamped both hands on the trestle to stay upright as a cramp wracked his leg and shot fire through his lower back. The paroxysm subsided. He flipped through his papers, restoring their order, then paused. His fingertip traced down the list sent by Taskin, detailing the names of who had passed Highgate from the precinct of the palace. Prince Kailen’s name appeared near the top. The entry beneath had been altered.
Mykkael’s questing touch sensed the rough patch where someone had lifted the script. The name of a servant had been scribed in the blank, the ink on that line just barely fuzzed by the telltale hatch of torn fibre. The captain ran a testing thumb over the trestle, and encountered the trace grit of blotting sand.
That detail niggled. Here in the garrison, an erasure was more likely to be scraped with a knife, with the ink of an overstrike left to dry without any civilized niceties.
‘Something