through a craft quarter emptied of people. Nothing moved but the foraging rats and a gaunt cat, stalking for vermin. They climbed, while the incoming fog lapped the shop-fronts, and moonlight carved shadows deep as Sithaer’s pits, and glanced in mercury ripples off the roundels of the unlit windows. S’Brydion reigned with an iron-clad fist: no looters had rifled the deserted craft shops. Doors and shutters remained locked, while strained silence hung in the streets.
‘Ath’s own grace, don’t ask,’ Dakar repeated at a mumble.
Sidir voiced his rattled thoughts anyhow. ‘Be seen here, we’re apt to be cut down for thieves.’
‘Dakar’s spent out,’ Elaira protested. ‘After settling the dead, he’s left unfit to weave wardings.’ She raked a wisp of hair from her face, forced to quell the clansman’s raw nerves on her own. ‘I don’t sense any presence. Since Bransian’s men trust main strength before talismans, my old hedge wife’s skills ought to serve.’
Cloaked against stabbing chill, touched by a desolation that bit to the bone, the three skulked under the ephemeral veil of Elaira’s suggestive illusion. Stray sound was less biddable. Dakar’s staggered footfalls cast echoes before them, up the zigzagged streets, and through closes, past the dead chimneys of the forges and the vacated barracks that loomed still as the sealed vault of a tomb.
The pervasive quiet unnerved, even words an unnatural intrusion.
Ahead, carved in jet silhouette, the lead roofs of the upper citadel drumkeeps notched the indigo sky. No watch lamps burned, there. If candles lit the alcoves for healers, attending to births and infirmities, not a gleam pierced the pervasive black-out. Only moonlight painted the empty lanes. The air smelled of oil, perhaps leaked from stores at the gatekeep, though the oddity grated, with no imminent sign of attack yet in evidence. Nor did the saving blanket of sea-mist wreathe the height of the promontory. The clear night exposed knife-edged shapes without mercy: in fraught stealth, the party of three crept upward to the gap at the Wyntok Gate. Under its inky shadow, Elaira came forward with her woman’s voice to approach the sentries.
‘Hello, the watch!’ she called out. ‘You have friends, come in peace to the citadel on behalf of the Crown of Rathain. With your duke’s leave, we ask to treat directly with Jeynsa s’Valerient.’
Which opening was honest, if not what Alestron’s overstrained guardsmen were disposed to hear. The response came back surly. ‘Stand forth! Show yourselves and disarm!’
‘Obey!’ Dakar cautioned, as Sidir bridled to protest. ‘Now they know we’re here, Bransian’s archers will have us skewered at the least hesitation.’
‘In the dark?’ Sidir snarled. ‘You claim they’re that good?’
‘Skilled as your best forest clansmen. Incompetents don’t serve the watch at this bridge.’ Dakar gritted his jaw, shoved away from the door-sill that sheltered them. ‘Disarm, as they ask. We’ll be shown to the duke under surety, once they’ve recognized me for a Fellowship spellbinder.’ Then, as six armoured men blocked the lane, with more cross-bowmen positioned at vantages in the battlements over their heads, Dakar gave rushed advice to Elaira. ‘For today, you’re no crystal-bearing Koriathain, but a healer trained by Ath’s adepts who’s chosen to side with the clans.’
‘I won’t lie to them,’ Elaira warned, a freezing reprimand.
Dakar rolled his eyes, caught a fist in his beard as though to yank hair in frustration. ‘For love of your prince, then! Try to limit yourself to the strategic truth that’s least likely to rile s’Brydion temper.’ He added, wrung nauseous, ‘I have faced the whip, here, only spared by a Sorcerer’s intervention. These men never compromise. They’ll kill without thought. If they’re shown cause to believe they’ve been cornered, even your Teir’s’Ffalenn cannot handle them.’
Then the moment for breathless precautions was past, as the men down the lane advanced to take charge of them. Sidir was given their blunt command to drop his bow. No one cared that he possessed no quiver or arrows. Surrounded at weapon-point, inspected and frisked, the arrivals were made to stand, half-clad and shivering, while torches were fetched. The flaming brands were thrust into their faces, within a whisker of blinding them.
The splintering light made Dakar’s head spin. He wrestled back dizziness, given no choice but to suffer rough handling.
‘Disapprove as you like,’ snapped the burly captain at arms, unfazed by Sidir’s hackled dignity. ‘The last ambassador here got an arrow through him. You haven’t, because Dakar is known to us.’
The torches were snuffed, then, perhaps not a mercy. Held captive, the three were prodded forward, stumbling in their state of rifled undress, and scrambling to snatch loosened laces.
Sidir set his chin, large enough to balk at the shove that would spill a lesser man to his knees. ‘The lady,’ he said, ‘is deserving of courtesy. You treat with her no better than ruffians.’
The protest met laughter, followed up by the clap of a gauntleted fist. ‘You’ll not get your weapons back yet, feral scout. Peace with you, for now, since there can’t be honour between us until you’ve survived your coming interview with our duke.’
The hour was uncivilized to question intruders who might be spies sent by the enemy. Yet Alestron’s ruling duke was awakened from sleep no matter the time was past midnight. He would interrogate all surprise guests, and without the amenities of state courtesy. Bransian rolled from bed, slit-eyed, while the report still tumbled from the lips of the runner sent in by his vigilant sentries.
‘Not that filthy gambeson!’ snapped Liesse, still blinking.
The duke glowered. He settled for the scarlet dressing-robe. Let the scuttling servant throw the garment over his shoulders, roped with surly scars and hard muscle, and skinned by the chafe of his chainmail. ‘I look like a floor mop,’ he groused, and shook off the wife’s urgent plea for a comb. ‘Beard tangles be damned! And forget boots, as well.’
He stalked for the door, while the extravagant gold tassels sewn at his hem tapped and glittered against his bare ankles. He paused at the threshold to snatch his sheathed broadsword, belting on the steel-bossed baldric.
Concerned that such driven haste boded ill, Liesse kicked free of the sheets. She grabbed the nearest dress in her wardrobe and slapped off the dithering servant. ‘Fetch up Keldmar’s widow. Run, do you hear? If my husband holds this interview by himself, we’ll be mopping up someone’s let blood off the carpet!’
Liesse hurried, yanking at laces. Already, the duke’s voice boomed up from below, directing the session to the closet room he used for hostile receptions.
That tiny, cramped chamber was airlessly hot, sealed by felt curtains for black-out. Only two of the available wicks were alight, thin flame struggling in the tall candelabra that flanked the duke’s raised chair. Mearn was not present; as the only other sibling in residence, he stood active watch on the walls. But Sevrand sat as the s’Brydion heir apparent, clad in his silver-trimmed captain’s breeches and sartorial, bare-chested splendour. The two wives called at short notice showed their unfinished dress, lacking state jewels, and in hair falling uncoiffed to the waist. Their tight faces redoubled the ominous weight, imposed by the row of heraldic chairs with Alestron’s bull motif worked into the cushions, and stamped in chased gold on the finials.
The presence the women commanded instructed the captain at arms: the petitioners just prodded in from the stairwell were offered a seat before the raised table. Dakar accepted at once, of necessity. Red-faced and puffing, he leaned back, straitly desperate and battling dizziness.
Elaira perched also, rough in her scout’s buckskins. If her level stare did not disclose the focus of her order’s training, she would seem ordinary, with her bronze hair tied back in a farm-wife’s plait. Sidir declined to sit. His insistent presence kept a liegeman’s stance, on his feet at her right shoulder.
Which mannered defiance bespoke her importance,