stamped with the Sunwheel. The flourished signature was no delegate secretary’s, but Lysaer s’Ilessid’s own hand.
The parchment fluttered towards the stone floor, its language demanding Alestron’s surrender, upon charges of s’Brydion conspiracy in concert with powers of Darkness. The elaborate seal cracked off as it struck, crushed to powder by Bransian’s boot-heel.
His baleful glance accosted his duchess, composed in her rose linen and shimmering cincture of pearls. Her hopeful expression pushed him to snipe first. ‘Don’t bother advising a plea for apology! We don’t know where among Dharkaron’s damned the Master of Shadow might be!’
‘His Grace doesn’t shift his fixed principles, anyway,’ Mearn reminded. ‘Thinks all his strategies through in advance. Like a plague-bearing weasel bashing a hornets’ nest, you don’t tend to notice his damages while you’re bent double, nursing the stings. I should know. I spent enough time as his captive at Vastmark to learn how he works from his captains.’
Liesse awarded such carping short shrift. ‘You could be wrong, this time. When Arithon delivered his ultimatum, he had no idea he would become summoned to rout a cult cabal out of Etarra. Given he has set that spark on dry tinder, don’t you think civil words might make him reconsider?’
‘Send my wits ahead of my carcass to Sithaer!’ Bransian swore, while Mearn straightened.
‘Besides the bald fact we’ve no clue where to look?’ The duke’s younger brother sheathed his vicious, small knife. ‘As soon try conversing with Daelion himself, to wheedle your way past due reckoning. His Grace would rightfully tell us straight out to suck eggs in our well-soiled nest.’
Dame Dawr’s cross-grained assessment agreed, that s’Brydion had spurned their last chance. Liesse pressed a taut hand to her lips. Regrets salvaged nothing. If the duke had abandoned the citadel as Arithon had asked, today’s mustering cry to retaliate would have left Lysaer’s cursed rage no fixed target. Now, the bone-crushing silence extended. The black blocks and red counters opposed on the map lent vicious hindsight to the Prince of Rathain’s urgent argument.
‘Dharkaron’s immortal bollocks,’ cracked Bransian, pinned under the pleading calm of his wife. ‘I’m no weathercock ditherer, to spin about at each puff from the arse of town-bred politicians! No, don’t start again!’ He had made his grim point: the Fellowship’s come-lately offer of sanctuary would have laid Alestron’s civilian population open to attack on forced march to old Tirans, if not see another third slowly starved from inadequate stores through the winter. Aware of the tears Liesse held in check by the mulish set to her chin, Bransian hammered a fist, sending counters and tin ink-wells flying. ‘We fight, and survive without grubbing for a miserable existence in the free wilds! You’ll not see me kiss this false avatar’s boots. Nor should I recant and risk getting burned for the skins of a handful of fainthearted relatives!’
‘I’m loath to bring comfort with difficult facts,’ a cooler voice interjected. ‘But the roads at this point are no longer an option, either for children or cavalcades.’
While Liesse startled, and Mearn grinned like a fox, more words spiralled up from the stairwell outside. ‘Don’t forget that Lysaer once burned his own troops in a curse-driven fit in Daon Ramon. Such madness as that can’t be trusted by anyone.’ Paused, breathless, at the last landing, the inbound newcomer added, ‘Recant or not, none of ours would gain quarter. The damned fanatics can’t rest till this citadel has been sacked, with every clan blood-line eradicated.’
Footsteps presently crested the stair-head, and Talvish strode in, road-dusty and redolent of hot horseflesh, cinders, and goose grease. ‘You’re one counter short,’ he admonished the duke. ‘We’ve more smoke-hazed enemies scuttling our way from Pellain.’
‘Show me!’ snapped Bransian, an arm clamped to secure his mail shirt as he bent and pawed under his chair for his scattered markers.
The lean swordsman advanced to the table. He snapped a courtesy nod to the duchess, then scrounged two spare broad-heads from his gear and used them to replace Mearn’s knives as corner pins holding the map. ‘More than enemy troops happened by the west road,’ he provoked, quick enough to avoid the duke’s youngest brother’s rabid snatch to recoup his weaponry.
Mearn’s face lit. ‘Trouble you can’t trust with Vhandon’s division?’
Talvish tipped his fair head towards the door, where other footsteps and more conversation flurried echoes up from below. ‘Judge for yourself.’
At least one of the voices was recognized. Duke Bransian shoved back upright, distempered, and snatched the pinched hairs of his beard from the links as his chainmail resettled. ‘If Arithon’s dimwit double tried running away, I’m astonished that you didn’t help him.’
Talvish stood dead-pan, with Mearn at his side perked to a weasel’s fixed interest. As the duke dumped the counters and began to restate the array of the Alliance deployment, Liesse unwound her laced fingers, and said, ‘That’s a maid’s voice, with Fionn. Whose daughter?’
‘Earl Jieret’s and Feithan’s,’ Talvish murmured, then shook his head, crushing out revived hope that the Teiren’s’Valerient might bear an official reconciliation from the Prince of Rathain. ‘Jeynsa was bound for East Halla, unaware that the borders were closed into Atwood.’
Then trouble itself strode through the door, the girl’s rangy form clad in holed boots and forest leathers that broadcast her need for a bath. Too thin, she moved with instinctive grace, the ruthlessly cropped hair fronding her face as rich brown as her scattered freckles. Eyes the sparkling, pale brilliance of aventurine dismissed every person who was not the duke. To Bransian, bow and bone-handled knives rattling, she bent her proud head and offered the crossed wrists at her breast by which clanborn acknowledged titled rank.
‘Jeynsa, Teiren’s’Valerient, Lord,’ she opened with point-blank formality.
While Mearn watched, avid, and Talvish stayed neutral, Liesse tucked her impulse to frown behind the bland stare she used on suspicious ambassadors.
Bransian slapped down a block for the vengeance-bent company riding the Pellain road, then flicked the red plug for Vhandon’s reserves to harry their bristling advance. His inimical stare raked the tall girl, without deigning acknowledgement of Fionn Areth’s come-lately arrival, behind her. ‘You look like a stick dragged in by a dog, and for what? By Dharkaron’s Spear, you have some strong nerve! What kind of fool would dare soil my presence, whose ungrateful liege washed his finicky hands of our years of unbroken service and loyalty!’ While Jeynsa faltered, outfaced, Bransian surged forward in anger. ‘Where is his Grace, anyway?’ accosted the duke. ‘I have some choice words to blister his ears concerning the enemies his doings have pitched like hazed rams against our defences.’
Liesse spoke, fast, her warning meant to deflect the girl’s brazen approach. ‘Child, be at peace. My husband has already heard that Prince Arithon was dispatched by the Fellowship to destroy a cabal of necromancy. Bluster though he will, Bransian knows a Sorcerer’s summons could not be refused.’
Jeynsa flushed, shamed for no obvious reason. ‘So Talvish told me,’ she admitted. Threatened by Bransian’s livid affront, almost anyone would have cowered. This sprig squared her shoulders with mulish bravado. ‘I have seen your walls, your gates, and your fortress, and heard the ground-swell of complaint in your streets,’ she addressed the duke. ‘I make no excuse for my liege’s defection from sharing Alestron’s defence.’ Jeynsa lifted her chin. Gaunt from the trail, irresolute in herself, the core of her stayed determined. ‘As Rathain’s chosen steward, I say his Grace was wrong to hand you his callous desertion.’
‘Toss us a tit-bit we don’t already know,’ Mearn snapped, disgusted. ‘Can you tell us where your skulking prince went when he left his charged task at Etarra?’
Jeynsa tossed her head, no. Grubby hands to scraped leathers, she looked as she was: a half-starved child called onto the carpet by strangers for a thoughtless escapade.