Far removed from the blizzards that savaged Baiyen Gap, and the fugitive crown prince who fled Jaelot’s guard, the forerunner of war set foot on the western coast of Rathain. The fated arrival came deep in the night, on the decks of an oared galley rowed at forced speed through the narrows of Instrell Bay.
A fortnight had passed since the solstice. Oblivious to the flare of contention between Koriathain and Fellowship Sorcerers, untroubled by threats posed by grimwards or bindings containing the rampaging hungers of wraiths, the Mayor of Narms awoke in snug blankets. Someone who had a fist like a battering ram hammered the door to his chamber. He blinked, reluctant to complete the transition between dreams and the burdens of cognizance.
The pounding continued, relentless. ‘Hell’s blighted minions!’ The mayor sat up. Blinking in owlish distemper, he croaked, ‘Which trade guild’s been raided this time?’
Two more hours remained before dawn. An ice flood of light from the waning moon threw shadow from the mullions in cut diamonds over his counterpane. Faint shouts echoed up from the courtyard. Then the door panel cracked, and his snub-nosed chamber steward peered past the jamb in fussed inquiry. ‘My lord, you’ll be needed. A galley from Tysan just tied up at the docks, flying sunwheel banners and bearing no less than a royal delegation.’
‘Royal? The Prince Exalted, himself?’ Narms’s mayor shot out of bed, while a gapped seam in the quilt exhaled a flurry of goosedown.
Past the whirl of feathers, the house steward returned a blunt shrug. ‘I’m sorry. The banners suggest so.’
‘Loose fiends and Dharkaron’s Black Chariot!’ An unannounced crossing in the depths of winter suggested a breaking disaster. Gruff even when fully wakeful, the mayor batted snagged fluff from his beard and hushed his wife’s drowsy inquiry.
‘State visitors. Ring the bell for your maid. We need to be dressed very quickly.’ To his steward, he added, ‘Have you heard what’s afoot?’
The pink, balding man bobbed his head like a turtle. ‘Lord, the dock runner who fetched me knew nothing. The night watch hauls wood to light fires in the hall. There won’t be time to rehang proper tapestries.’
‘Well at least the trestles were scrubbed since the feast,’ the wife said in acid irritation. ‘Royal envoys who don’t send a herald ahead will just have to bear with inconveniences.’ She shoved out of bed in her night rail, a handsome woman with graceful hands who marshaled her thoughts, blinking into the flare as the servant struck light to a candle. ‘The kitchen staff will be baking the day’s bread. Get someone to send them notice we’re receiving, and tell them how many guests of state.’
‘I’ll go, mistress,’ the steward offered at once, then added, ‘should I have the east-wing chambers refreshed?’
‘Wake the master of horse, first,’ the mayor amended, one foot poked half into his hose. ‘If this meeting’s too pressing to bide until daybreak, I’m thinking we’ll be dunned for fast couriers before anyone wants hospitality and beds.’
‘Yes, lord.’ The steward ducked out, the door latch clicked shut with apprehensive care.
‘At least we didn’t suffer this intrusion two days ago.’ Prosaic, the wife pinned her smoky tangles of hair, then dug in the lacquered armoire for a wrap, and the best of her fancy lace petticoats.
Stalled by a tangle snagged in his points, the mayor gave tongue out of habit. ‘Our guild ministers weren’t all puking drunk at the twelfth night festivities.’
‘No.’ The honeyed agreement that made his wife indispensable at state functions preceded her wasp sting of denouement. ‘But if your Divine Prince saw all the jewels on their wives as they tried to outshine the Etarrans, we’d find his marshals dunning our treasury. Or don’t you think Avenor’s come begging for funds, or armed troops, or else the grain stores to mount a winter campaign on barbarians?’
‘I don’t know what he’s come for!’ Off-balance, the mayor jammed his stick shanks into his best pair of silk-slashed breeches. ‘If you’re going to speculate, have the good grace to wait until after I’ve clothed my shivering buttocks.’
‘You’ll sweat soon enough, on your knees before royalty.’ The wife’s catty tongue showed no deference to station. ‘Bowing to a blood prince was bother enough, before there were flocks of sunwheel fanatics, rolling cow eyes like he’s god sent.’
The mayor stretched a kink from the small of his back, startled to unwonted laughter. ‘Say that to his Grace, I’ll buy you new pearls.’
‘I’d rather warn the unmarried chambermaids to steer clear of shadowy alcoves.’ Adrift in lace petticoats, with her ribbons undone, his wife looked up in snide interest. ‘Gossip from Avenor insists his Exalted Grace hasn’t bedded his princess since the hour his heir was conceived.’ Through a frown at her husband, who snatched up yesterday’s shirt for convenience, she added, ‘That’s sixteen years. If the s’Ilessid’s kept his manhood to himself for that long, I agree with his priests. He’s not human.’
‘He’s not human,’ the mayor affirmed, then bellowed, short-tempered, for his valet to roust up and lend help with the studs on his doublet. When the slug-headed servant failed to appear, the mayor kept talking, his elbows bent at ridiculous angles through his effort to loop rows of braid frogs on jet buttons. ‘His Grace hasn’t aged since I was a child, and he was presented as Prince of the West. That was before he forwent Tysan’s colors for a mantle of white fox and diamonds.’
‘Oh, he’s aged,’ the wife argued, her sharp humor fled as she stepped to assist with her husband’s disgruntled robing. ‘Just look at his eyes. Hard as faceted sapphire, and too driven for pity.’ A break, as she perked up his wilted lace collar, then, ‘You want the gold chain and ruby pendant?’ Without pause for his nod, she settled the massive links over his dove gray silk. ‘Whatever the Exalted Prince asks you to give, don’t commit the new recruits.’
‘What?’ The mayor peered at his wife. ‘There hasn’t been heavy fighting since the Caithwood campaign failed to clear Taerlin’s forests of clansmen.’
‘I know.’ His wife spun away in a rustle of layered muslin. ‘But things change. Whatever ill wind has blown in with that galley, no man of twenty should be sent out to die before the grass greens in the spring.’
The mayor took pause, the squared links of his state jewelry dipped blood in the fluttering candlelight. ‘You think the Master of Shadow’s come back?’
His wife plucked up her hand mirror. One glance, and her puffy eyes half filled with tears. She slapped the silvered face down in rare and explosive anger. ‘Whyever else should we be dragged out of bed before dawn?’ Discomposed by the thought of exalted state company, she rebounded to blistering irritation. ‘If Avenor brings word of the Spinner of Darkness, the ill news of his reiving is just going to wait until my maid makes me presentable.’
Chilled in stockinged feet, unsure how to manage the imminent concept of shadows and minions of evil, the mayor bent and rummaged through the bottom of the armoire. He fetched out the fanciest boots he could find, ones with velvet-lined cuffs and stitched patterns of seed pearls. ‘I’ll delay the proceedings by serving mulled wine.’ He jammed a foppish black hat with peacock plumes over his short-cropped head, then sailed through the doorway, girded to balk s’Ilessid divinity and appease his wife’s queer foreboding.
The hall and the stairwell were darkened by night, the pine-knot brand in the lower vestibule burned down to a flickering cinder. The light would be refreshed at the dawn change of watch, as yet several hours away.
Such lack of diligent guard was routine. Narms was no bastion of armed prowess, to draw the Divine Prince in a crisis. Its city maintained one dilapidated keep, without earthworks. Built over and around the site of an ancient Paravian sea landing, her wealth was guild owned, and invested into skilled labor. Through the centuries since the uprising, the crumbled brick quay overlooking the bay head acquired a