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Excerpt
The closet
was dark, dusty, stifling, and the pound of her heart, ragged thunder
in her ears. Her breaths went and came in strangling gasps. If death took
her now, it would come filled with horrors, and strike without sound from
behind...
In the long
shadow of the mountain spring twilight, under the glow of a thousand lanterns,
Anja, Crown Princess of Sessalie, failed to appear at the banquet to celebrate
her official betrothal. The upset and shock caused by her disappearance
had not yet shaken the lower citadel, though more than an hour had passed
since the midnight change in the watch.
The public
festivities continued, oblivious. Farmwives and tradesmen still danced
in the streets, while the unruly crowds spilling out of the wine shops
teemed and shouted, a hotbed for fist fights and arguments. Mykkael, Captain
of the Garrison, kept a trained ear on the tone of the roistering outside.
He listened, intent, to the off-key singers who staggered arm in arm past
the keep. The noise ebbed and flooded to the tidal surge of bodies, jamming
the bye lanes and thoroughfares.
The racket
funnelled into the cramped stone cell requisitioned as his private quarters.
Captain Mykkael sighed, rasped his bracer across the itch of two day's
stubble, then propped a weary hip against the trestle where his sword
lay, unsheathed. The hard-used steel cried out for a whetstone and rag
to scour a light etching of rust. Mykkael cursed the neglect, but knew
better than to hope for the time to care for his weapon.
The taps in
the taverns would scarcely run dry on this night. Landlords had stocked
their cellars for weeks, while the folk from Sessalie's farthest-flung
valleys crammed into the citadel to honour Princess Anja's brilliant match.
Their exuberance was justified. A marriage alliance with the Kingdom of
Devall promised them access to the coveted wealth of the sea trade. Yet
if craft shops and merchants had cause to rejoice, no soldier who bore
the crown's falcon blazon was likely to rest before cock's crow.
Twenty hours
on duty, with no respite in sight, Mykkael grumbled, 'At least on a battlefield,
a man got the chance to lay down his shield after sundown.'
He stretched
his knotted back, steeled himself for discomfort, then clamped iron hands
around his thigh above the knee. A grunt ripped through his teeth as he
raised the game limb on to the plank trestle that served him as weapon
rack and desk. There, forced to pause, he blinked through running sweat,
while the twinge of pinched nerves rocked him dizzy.
Mother of all
thundering storms, how he ached! Far more than a man should, who had no
trace of grey. Still young, still vigorous, Mykkael kept his sable hair
cropped from blind habit, as he had through his years as a mercenary.
Nonetheless,
his career as a hired sword was finished. Cut short, with the spoils and
pay shares laid aside not enough to sustain him in retirement. His fiercely
kept dream, of an apple-bearing orchard and a pasture to breed horses,
lay as far beyond grasp as the moon.
'Damn lady
fortune for a cross-grained crone.' Mykkael glowered at his leg, stretched
across the tabletop like so much worthless carrion. His infirmity disgusted
him. Three tavern brawls nipped in the bud, two street riots quelled,
and a knife fight in the market started by a Highgate lording who was
fool enough to try to nab a cutpurse; scarcely enough exertion to wind
him, yet the pain clamped down with debilitating force the longer he stayed
on his feet.
'Borri'vach!'
he swore under his breath. The uncouth, rolling gutturals of the southern
desert dialect matched his savage mood as he unhooked the looped studs
at his calf. No help for the embarrassment, that canvas breeches looked
ridiculous under his blazoned captain's surcoat. Yet the more genteel
appointments of trunk hose and hightop boots had proved to be too binding.
Mykkael jerked up the cuff, laying bare his crippled knee with its snarl
of livid scars.
Even in hindsight,
he took little comfort from the troop surgeon's final prognosis. 'Powers
be thanked, young man, you're still hale and breathing. With a joint break
like yours, and a septic laceration, I'd have dosed you senseless, and
roped you out straight and taken that leg with a bone saw.
Mykkael endured
the lasting bitterness. Not to walk was to die. Even strapped in the mud
of a drawing poultice, screaming half senseless with fever, he had kept
that core of self-awareness. Others might cling to life, hobbling on crutches
or a peg leg. For Mykkael, any handicap that rendered him defenceless
would have wounded pride enough to kill him
Alive enough
to wrestle with his poisonous regrets, he groped through the clutter of
bottles and remedy tins, while the cramps throbbed relentlessly through
muscle and nerve, and the shattered bone that fastened damaged ligaments.
Already the discomfort played the length of his leg. By experience he
knew: the spasms would soon lock his hip and seize his back, unless the
liniment just acquired from the nomad in the market could deliver him
the gift of a miracle
Hooves clattered
in the outer bailey. Someone shouted. A burst of agitated voices erupted
in the lower guardroom, fast followed by the rushed pound of feet up the
stairwell
Mykkael found
the dingy tin and flipped off the cap, overwhelmed by the smell of crude
turpentine. 'Powers of deliverance,' he gasped. Eyes streaming, he scooped
up a sticky dollop. The unnatural stuff blistered, even through his layers
of callus
Regardless,
he slathered the paste over his knee. Its raw fire scoured, searing through
entrenched pain. Mykkael kneaded in the residue, his breath jerked through
his half-closed throat. He had no peace to lose. The fresh bout of trouble
bearing down on his doorway was unlikely to grant him blessed ease in
a chair, replete with grain whisky and hot compresses
A staccato
knock, cut off as the latch tripped. Vensic poked his snub nose inside,
and grimaced in startled distaste. 'Captain, for the love of crown and
country! This place reeks like a tannery.'
Mykkael pointedly
hooked the tin closer. 'Should I give a damn who in the reaper's many
hells finds my off-duty habits offensive?' He slopped another gob of liniment
across his spasmed calf, and this time suppressed his urge to wince. 'Whatever
complaint's come roosting this time, I'll remind you, Sergeant Jedrey
has the watch.'
Apologetic,
Vensic stepped inside. He shut the door, his easy-natured, upland features
braced to withstand his captain's dicey temper. 'Jedrey's through the
Middlegate, routing vandals from the merchants' quarter. You notice anything
irregular on patrol?'
Mykkael shrugged,
still massaging his wracked limb. 'The usual few brawlers and a bravo
who got himself stabbed. A drunk was struck by a carriage. Dead on impact.
The rest was all rumour, thankfully unfounded. Have you heard the crazy
story that the princess ran away? Left her royal suitor abandoned at the
feast, weeping on the skinny shoulder of the seneschal.'
Silence, of
a depth to make the ears ring. Mykkael glanced up, astonished. The absurd
notion of court curmudgeon and jilted foreign prince should have raised
a howling snort of laughter. 'Better say what's happened, soldier!'
'You have a
formal summons. Brought in by a royal herald in state livery, though he's
masked his gold thread under a plain cloak.' Unwontedly deadpan, Vensic
added, thoughtful, 'Shut-mouthed as a clam concerning the king's word,
though we warned him you'd be sharp if we had to fetch you down to the
wardroom.'
Mykkael's busy
fingers stopped working in the liniment. 'A crown herald! Below the Highgate?
Has the moat watch gone bashed on cloud wine?'
But the stunned
rabbit shine to Vensic's blue eyes arrested his captain's disbelief.
'Of all the
blinding powers of daylight!' Touched by an odd chill, Mykkael slapped
down his turned cuff. He snatched up the rag meant for oiling his sword,
wiped his smeared fingers, then hauled his lame leg from the trestle.
A useless point, to argue that Princess Anja never acted the tart, or
lowered herself to go slumming. Unlike her rakehell older brother, she
visited the lower citadel only for processionals, surrounded by the gleam
of her palace guard retinue, sweeping through to join the hunt, or to
settle the petty grievances in the outlying hamlets that had languished
as the king's health faltered.
'No one's mentioned
an armed party of abductors in the wine shops,' Mykkael said with biting
sarcasm. Tiny Sessalie was too hidebound to harbour a conspiracy without
the busybody matrons making talk. So hidebound and small that every shopkeeper
and servant knew his neighbour's close affairs, with half the blood in
the kingdom related to itself by kin ties that confounded memory. 'Hard
pressed, I'd be, to arrest a single miscreant who's sober enough to raise
a weapon.'
Mykkael snatched
up his naked blade, still loath to credit rumour. Princess Anja was beloved
for her light-hearted spirit. Already, her compassion had earned the same
reverence the queen had known before her tragic death. To Mykkael, she
was an icon who demanded sharp respect. He had needed his crack division,
and fully half of his reserves to restrain the cheering commons when the
handsome Prince of Devall had arrived with his train to formalize his
suit for her marriage. Everyone had noted the princess's flushed face.
The trill of silver harness bells had shimmered on the air, as, radiant
with joy, she had spurred her mount to welcome the match that young love
and state auspices had favoured. The branding memory lingered, of the
kiss exchanged upon the public thoroughfare. Her Grace's greeting had
burst all restraint – an explosive storm of passion more likely to
invite a lusty midnight foray to her bedchamber.
'Pretty foolish,
if her Grace has stirred up the palace because she slipped off to the
garden for a tryst.' Mykkael's amused chuckle masked the chilly ring of
steel as he rammed his battered longsword into the sheath at his shoulder.
'Jedrey's better born, has the manners and diplomacy for that sort of
social embarrassment.'
'Well, nicety
doesn't man the walls, below the Highgate. If there's been foul play,
the merchants are likely to work themselves into a lather, bemoaning the
loss of Devall's ships. Suppose we faced a war?' Flippant though he was,
to broach that jibing comment, Vensic jumped to clear the doorway. 'If
the old king fancies he sees armies at the gates, he'll want your field
experience ahead of any uptown bravo's breeding.'
Mykkael scotched
the ribbing with his usual spiked glance, and prowled in hitched strides
towards the stairwell.
'You won't
have to go afoot,' Vensic added, dismayed as he noted the exhaustion betrayed
by his captain's dragging limp. 'The herald's overbearing and snide with
impatience, but his escort has a saddled mount waiting.'
'Well, the
walk's the lesser evil,' Mykkael admitted, bald-faced. 'Bloody war's my
proper venue. Crown orders aside, the drunks won't stay their knives.
How in the reaper's hells can I keep the peace among the riff-raff if
I'm called on to the proverbial royal carpet to act as a frisky maiden's
chaperone?'
The wry conclusion
stayed unvoiced. Taskin, Commander of the Palace Guard, was no more likely
to appreciate a garrison man with desert-bred colouring treading on his
turf above the Highgate.
Commander Taskin,
at that moment, bent his ice-pale gaze upon the tearful maid who had last
seen Princess Anja in her chambers.
'What more
is left to say, my lord,' she despaired, her pink hands clasped and shaking.
'I've told you all I know.'
Tall, gaunt,
erect as tempered steel, with a distinguished face and frosty hair, Taskin
radiated competence. His silences could probe with unsubtle, scorching
force. While the distraught maid stammered and wept, he stepped across
the carpet and bent his dissecting regard over the clutter on Anja's dressing
table.
The gold-rimmed
hand mirror, the brushes and combs and tinted bottles of scent glinted
under the flutter of the candles. No rice powder had been spilled. The
waxed parquet floor showed no scuffs or other evidence of struggle.
In a cultured,
velvet baritone that inspired chills of dread, Commander Taskin prompted,
'The princess was wearing bracelets adorned with golden bells. Her slippers,
you say, had silver heels and toe caps. No rare jewels, none of the crown
heirlooms, but she would have made noise at every movement. What else?
Could she have masked a change of clothing under her court dress?'
The nervous
maid curtseyed, though the commander's back was turned. 'Her Grace's gown
had bare shoulders and laces down the front. Nothing underneath, but her
thinnest silk camisole. Canna brought her smallclothes from the cedar
closet. She stayed to empty the bath and gather towels while I helped
her Grace with her wardrobe.'
Taskin added
nothing, hands clasped behind his waist.
The maid swallowed
and dabbed at streaming eyes. 'Her Grace sent me out to fetch the turquoise
ribbons and a pin she said had been her lady mother's. By the time I came
back, she had already left. Gone to the banquet, so it seemed, since nobody
heard even a whisper of disturbance. If she's never been so thoughtless,
well, new love would make her giddy. Her intended has the looks to scatter
reason.'
The maid's
distress was genuine. Anja loved a joke, but her style would not stoop
to indiscretions that embarrassed her blameless servants.
Taskin prowled
the chamber, his booted step silent as a wraith's. An uneasy pall of silence
gripped the cream and copper opulence of the princess's private apartment.
Such stillness by itself framed a stark contradiction to her tireless
spirit and exuberance.
Anja's zest
for life met the eye at every turn. The plush, tasselled chairs were left
in compulsive disarray by her penchant for casual company. Gilt and marble
tabletops held a riot of spring flowers, with long-stemmed hothouse lilies
forced to share their porcelain vases with the weeds and wild brambles
plucked from the alpine meadows. On the divan, a book of poetry had a
torn string riding glove marking its vellum pages. Abandoned in the window
nook, a seashell scavenged from the beaches of Devall overflowed with
a jumble of pearl earrings and bangle bracelets. The playful force of
Anja's generosity clashed with the constraints of royal station: the seneschal's
latest scolding had been blatantly ignored. The massive chased tea service
kept to honour state ambassadors had been shanghaied again, to cache the
salvaged buttons for the ragman.
Even Taskin's
impassive manner showed concern as he subjected the princess's intimate
belongings to a second, devouring scrutiny.
'My Lord Commander,'
the maid appealed, 'if Princess Anja planned an escapade, I never heard
a whisper. Her maid of honour, Shai, was the one who shared her confidence
the few times she chose to flaunt propriety.'
'But the Lady
Shai knows nothing. I've already asked,' a voice interjected from the
hallway.
Taskin spun.
His glance flicked past the startled maid, while the elite pair of guards
flanking the entry bowed to acknowledge Crown Prince Kailen.
His Highness
lounged in stylish elegance against the door jamb, still clad in satin
sleeves and the glitter of his ruby velvet doublet. Fair as his sister,
but with his sire's blue eyes, he regarded the ruffled icon of palace
security with consternation. 'Don't dare say I didn't warn you, come the
morning. Anja's surely playing pranks. She's probably laughing herself
silly, this minute, enjoying all the fuss. Ignore her. Go to bed. She'll
show up that much sooner, apology in hand. Did you really think she'd
wed even Devall's heir apparent without any test of his affection?'
'That would
be her Grace's touch, sure enough,' a guardsman ventured. 'Subtlety's
not her measure.'
And the smiles
came and went, for the uproar that had followed when her Grace had exposed
the pompous delegate from Gance as a hypocrite. On the night he fled the
realm, flushed and fuming in disgrace, she had asked the pastry cook to
serve up a live crow inside the traditional loaf of amity.
'Furies, I
remember!' But Taskin did not relax, or share his guardsmen's chuckles
of appreciation. Instead, his tiger's stalk took him back to the window,
where he tracked the distanced voices of the searchers beating the hedges
in the garden. They met with no success, to judge by the curses arisen
over snagging thorns and holly. 'No harm, if you're right, Highness. We'd
survive being played for fools.' The commander inclined his head, meeting
the crown prince's insouciance with deliberation. 'But if you're wrong?
Anja taken as a hostage could bring us to our knees, drain the treasury
at best. At worst, we could find ourselves used as the bolt hole for some
warring sorcerer's minion.'
An uncomfortable
truth, routinely obscured by Sessalie's bucolic peace: the icy girdle
of the mountains was the only barrier that kept the evil creatures from
invading the far north.
'May heaven's
fire defend us!' the maid whispered, while the nearer guardsman made a
sign to ward off evil.
If not for
the peaks, with their ramparts of vertical rock, and the natural defences
of killing storms and glaciers, tiny Sessalie would not have kept its
stubborn independence. The hardy breed of crofters who upheld the royal
treasury would never have enjoyed the lush alpine meadows, which fattened
their tawny cattle every summer, or the neatly terraced fields, with their
grape crops and barley brought to harvest through the toil of generations.
'Show me the
sorcerer who could march his army across the Great Divide.' The crown
prince dismissed their fears with his affable shrug. A drunk hazed on
cloud wine might dream of such a prodigy; not a sober man standing on
his intellect.
Even to Taskin's
exacting mind, the worry was farfetched. The flume that threaded that
dreadful terrain was nothing if not a deathtrap. Foolish prospectors sometimes
came, pursuing gold and minerals. They died to a man, slaughtered by hungry
kerries, or else drowned in the rapids, their smashed bones spewed out
amid the boil of dirty froth that thundered down the mouth of Hell's Chasm.
Skilled alpinists occasionally traversed the high rim. Survivors of that
route had been favoured by freakish luck and mild weather, since the arduous
climb over Scatton's Pass required altitude conditioning for a crossing
that took many weeks. Yet where storms and exposure sometimes spared the
hardy few, the ravine killed without discrimination. The relentless toll
of casualties had extended for time beyond memory.
'I thought
you'd want to know,' Prince Kailen said at length. 'My father stayed lucid
long enough to oppose the seneschal's complacency. His sealed order sent
for the Captain of the Garrison.'
Commander Taskin
left the window, his brows raised in speculation. 'Were you concerned
I'd been pre-empted? Not the case. 'If youre wrong, and your sister's
disappearance isn't an innocent joke, then we could have unknown enemies
lurking in the lower citadel. Had his Majesty not dispatched the summons,
I would have done the same. Has the garrison man arrived yet?'
'He should
reach the palace at any moment.' Prince Kailen straightened up and jumped
to clear the doorway for Taskin's abrupt departure. 'I expected you'd
wish to attend the royal audience.'
The commander
hastened towards the stair, in unspoken accord that the seneschal ought
not to be left in sole charge. All too often, of late, the aged King of
Sessalie lapsed into witless reverie. 'While I'm gone, Highness, have
the grace to show my guardsmen every likely nook your royal sister could
have used for a hideaway.'
The gate guard
who emerged to meet the herald's band of outriders was the son of a noble,
marked by his strapping build and northern fairness. His smart scarlet
surcoat fell to his polished boots, which flashed with the gleam of gilt
spurs.
'Captain Myshkael?'
His aristocratic lisp softened the name's uncivil consonants. Cool, cerulean
eyes surveyed the laggard still astride. 'The king's summons said, “at
once.”'
'Never seen
a man limp?' Mykkael barked back, refusing to be hustled like a lackey.
Bedamned if he would jump for any lordling's petty pleasure, aware as
he was that his dark skin raised contempt far beyond the small delay for
the care he took to spare his aching knee.
The guardsman
disdained to answer. Once the captain had dismounted, he extended a gloved
hand and brusquely offered a bundled-up cloak with no device.
Mykkael passed
his winded horse to the hovering groom and received the hooded garment,
his smile all brazen teeth. No one had to like his breeding. Last summer's
tourney had proved his deadly prowess. Crippled or not, the challenge
match that won his claim to rank had been decisive. If the upper-crust
gossip still dismissed the upset as fickle, he could afford to laugh.
His strong hand on the garrison manned the Lowergate defences. That irony
alone sheltered Sessalie's wealthy bigots, and granted them their pampered
grace to flourish.
Mykkael flipped
the plain cloak across his muscled shoulders. The hem trailed on the ground.
As though his slighter frame and desert colouring made no mockery of pretence,
or the gimp of his knee could be masked, he gestured towards the lamplight
avenue, its refined marble pavement gleaming past the shadow of the Highgate.
'After you, my lord herald.'
No streetwise
eye was going to miss the precedent, that the Captain of the Garrison
came on urgent, covert business to the palace.
'By every bright
power of daylight, Captain! Try not to draw undue attention to yourself.'
Through a tight, embarrassed pause, the herald gamely finished. 'The royal
household doesn't need a sensation with Devall's heir apparent here to
contract for his bride.'
'His Majesty
commands my oath-bound duty to the crown,' Mykkael acknowledged. 'But
isn't that golden egg already broken? To my understanding, we're one piece
short for promising the man a royal wedding.'
Served a censuring
glance from the ranking guardsman, the herald gasped, appalled. 'On my
honour, I didn't breathe a word!' To Mykkael, he added, urgent, 'You'd
better save what you know for the ears of the king and his seneschal.'
He waved his charge along, taken aback a second time as he had to push
his stride to stay abreast.
For Mykkael,
the discomfort wore a different guise: beyond Highgate's granite arch,
with its massive, grilled gates, he shouldered no citizen's rights, and
no authority. Above the jurisdiction of the Lowergate garrison, he became
a king's officer, pledged to bear arms in crown service. His claim to
autonomy fell under the iron hand of Commander Taskin of the Royal Guard.
That paragon was the son of an elite uplands family, handpicked to claim
his title at his predecessor's death. His prowess with the sword was a
barracks legend, and his temperament suffered no fool gladly.
A man groomed
to stand at the king's right hand, on equal footing with the realm's seneschal,
would have small cause to welcome an outsider and ex-mercenary, obliged
to prove his fitness in a yearly public tourney until he scrounged the
means to fund retirement.
'I hope your
sword's kept campaign-sharp, and without a speck of rust,' the palace
guardsman ventured in snide warning. 'If not, the commander will tear
you to ribbons, in the royal presence, or out of it.'
Captain Mykkael
raised his eyebrows, his sudden laughter ringing off the fluted columns
that fronted the thoroughfare. 'Well, thank the world's bright powers,
I'm a garrison soldier. If I wore a blade in his Majesty's presence, rust
or not, I'd be tried and hung for treason.'
Stars wheeled
above the snow-capped rims of the ranges, their shining undimmed as the
face of disaster shrouded the palace in quiet. On the wide, flagstone
terrace, still laid for the princess's feast, a chill breeze riffled the
tablecloths. It whispered through the urns of potted flowers, persistent
as the stifled conversations of the guests who, even now, refused to retire.
Of the thousand gay lanterns, half had gone out, with no servants at hand
to trim wicks. Silver cutlery and fine porcelain lay in forlorn disarray,
where distraught lady courtiers had purloined linen napkins to stem their
silenced onslaught of tears.
The staunch
among them gathered to comfort Lady Shai, whose diamond hair combs and
strings of pearls shimmered to her trembling. No one's calm assurance
would assuage her distress, no matter how kindly presented.
Prince Kailen's
suggestion of practical jokes had roused her gentle nature to fiercely
outspoken contradiction. 'Not Anja. Not this time! Since the very first
hour the Prince of Devall started courting her, she has spoken of nothing
else! Merciful powers protect her, I know! Never mind her heart, the kingdom's
weal is her lifeblood. She once told me she would have married a monster
to acquire seaport access for the tradesmen. She said – oh, bright
powers! How fortune had blessed her beyond measure, that the prince was
so comely and considerate.'
A wrenching
pause, while Shai sipped the glass of wine thrust upon her by the elderly
Duchess of Phail. The ladies surrounding her collapse glanced up, hopeful,
as Commander Taskin ghosted past on his purposeful course for the audience
hall.
'Any news?'
asked Lady Phail, her refined cheeks too pale, and her grip on her cane
frail with worry.
Taskin shook
his head. 'Not yet.'
Lady Shai tipped
up her face, her violet eyes inflamed and swollen. 'Commander! I beg you,
don't listen to the crown prince and dismiss my cousin's absence as a
folly. Upon my heart and soul, something awful has befallen. Her Grace
would have to be dead to have dealt the man she loves such an insult.'
The commander
paused, his own handkerchief offered to replace the sodden table linen
wrung between Shai's damp fingers. 'Rest assured, the matter has my undivided
attention.'
He nodded to
the others, found a chair for Lady Phail, then proceeded on his way. Ahead,
a determined crowd of men accosted the arched entry that led to the grand
hall of state. The stout chamberlain sighted the commander's brisk approach
and raised his gold baton. 'Make way!' His hoarse shout scarcely carried
through the turmoil.
Commander Taskin
lost patience. 'Stand down!'
The knot cleared
for that voice, fast as any green batch of recruits. The chamberlain pawed
at his waist for his keying. 'You've come at last. Thank blazes. The king
is with the seneschal.' Still too rattled to turn the lock quickly, the
fat official gabbled to forestall the commander's impatience. 'His Majesty
sent a herald to the lower keep and summoned that sand-whelped upstart
–'
Taskin interrupted,
sharp. 'The Captain of the Garrison? I already know. He's a fighter, no
matter what she-creature bore him. His record of field warfare deserves
your respect.'
As the double
doors parted, Taskin did not immediately walk through. He pivoted instead,
catching the petitioners short of their eager surge forward. 'Go home!
All of you. My guardsmen are capable. If your services are needed, I'd
have you respond to the crown's better interests well rested.'
Through a stirring
of brocades, past the craning of necks in pleated collars, a persistent
voice arose. 'Is there crisis?'
Another chimed
in, 'Have you news?'
'No news!'
Taskin's bark cut off the rising hysteria. 'Once the princess is found,
the palace guard will send criers. Until then, collect your wives and
retire!'
'But Commander,
you don't understand,' ventured the fox-haired merchant whose dissenting
word rose the loudest. 'Some of us wish to offer our house guards, even
lend coin from our personal coffers to further the search for her Grace.'
Taskin raised
his eyebrows. His drilling survey swept the gathering, no man dismissed,
even the foreign ambassador from the east, with his bullion brocade and
his pleated silk hat, hung with a star sapphire and tassel. 'Very well.
I'll send out the seneschal. He'll take down the list of names and offered
services.'
Prepared for
the ripple of dismayed consternation, Taskin's lean mouth turned, perhaps
in amusement. The rest of his bearing stayed glass-hard with irony. Now,
no man dared to leave, lest he be the first to expose his underlying insincerity.
Once each pledge of interest was committed to ink, the commander could
winnow the truly loyal from the hypocrites at leisure.
Beyond the
broad doors, the throne and gallery loomed empty. The bronze chandeliers
hung dark on their chains, the only light burning in the small sconce
by the privy chamber. Outside its thin radiance, the room's rich appointments
sank into gloom, the lion-foot chairs reduced to a whispered gleam of
gold leaf, and the crystalline flares off the glass-beaded tassels a glimmer
of ice on the curtain pulls.
Taskin's brisk
footsteps raised scarcely a sound as he passed, a fast-moving shadow against
lead-paned windows, faintly burnished by starlight. By contrast, the clash
of voices beyond the closed door raised echoes like muffled thunder.
Taskin acknowledged
the six guardsmen, standing motionless duty, then wrenched the panel open
without knocking. He sized up the tableau of three men beyond as he would
have viewed the pieces on a chessboard.
In the company
of the King of Sessalie and the seneschal, the High Prince of Devall claimed
the eye first. He was a young man of striking good looks. The hair firmly
tied at his nape with silk ribbon hung dishevelled now, honey strands
tugged loose at the temples. Though he sat with his chin propped on laced
hands, his presence yet reflected the lively intelligence that exhaustion
had thrown into eclipse. He still wore banquet finery: a doublet of azure
velvet edged in bronze, and studded with diamonds at the collar. His white
shirt with its pearl-buttoned cuffs set off his shapely hands. The signet
of Devall, worn by the heir apparent, flashed ruby fire as he straightened
to the movement at the doorway.
Taskin bowed,
but as usual, never lowered his head. While the seneschal's ranting trailed
into stiff silence, and the king's prating quaver sawed on, Devall's prince
appraised the commander's rapid entry with amber eyes, dark-printed with
strain. 'Lord Taskin, I trust you bring news?'
'None, Highness.
Every man I have in the guard is assigned. They are diligent.'
The seneschal
shot the commander a scathing glance for such bluntness. 'If you've heard
about the herald dispatched to the lower keep, can I rely on your better
sense to restore the realm's decorum? We scarcely need to raise the garrison
to track down an errant girl!'
Taskin disregarded
both the glare and the sarcasm. He would have honesty above empty words
and false assurances. Nor would he speak out of turn before his king,
whose maundering trailed off in confusion.
'Your Majesty,'
Taskin cracked, striking just the right tone. 'I have no word as yet on
your daughter.'
A blink from
the King of Sessalie, whose gnarled hands tightened on his chair. His
gaunt frame sagged beneath the massive state mantle with its marten fur
edging, and the circlet of his rank that seemed too weighty for his eggshell
head. Nonetheless, the trace of magnificence remained in the craggy architecture
of his face; a reduced shadow of the vigorous man who had begotten two
bright and comely children, and raised them to perpetuate a dynasty that
had lasted for three thousand years.
An authoritative
spark rekindled his glazed eyes. 'Taskin. I've sent for Captain Myshkael.'
Brief words, short sentences; the king's speech of late had become wrenchingly
laboured, a sorrow to those whose love was constant. 'You'll see soon
enough. My seneschal objects.'
'I find the
choice commendable, your Majesty.' Taskin kept tight watch on the foreign
prince from Devall, and recorded the masked start of surprise. 'Until
we know what's happened, we are well advised to call out every resource
we can muster.'
The High Prince
slapped his flattened hands upon the tabletop, but snatched short of shoving
to his feet. 'Then you don't feel her Grace has played a prank for my
embarrassment?'
'I don't know,
Highness. Her women don't think so.' Taskin's shoulders lifted in the
barest, sketched shrug. 'But Princess Anja being something of a law unto
herself, her ladies have been wrong as much as right when the girl played
truant as a child.'
The seneschal
thrust out his bony, hawk nose, his stick frame bristling with outrage.
'Well, we don't need a scandal buzzing through the lower citadel! Find
the herald, do. Pull rank at the Highgate, and turn the captain back to
mind his garrison.'
'Too late.'
Already alerted by the sound of inbound footsteps, Taskin's icy gaze fixed
on the seneschal as he let fly his own sly dart. 'In fact, your service
is the one that's needed elsewhere.' Two crisp sentences explained the
gist behind the courtiers held under the chamberlain's watchful eye.
'Your Majesty,
have I leave?' The seneschal bowed, shrewd enough to forgo his sour rivalry
for opportunity. He thrust to his feet, his supple, scribe's hands all
but twitching for the chance to wring advantage from the merchants' pledge
of loyalty.
A short delay
ensued, while King Isendon of Sessalie raised a palsied forearm and excused
the gaunt official from his presence. As the seneschal stalked away, he
peered in vague distress at the straight, stilled figure of his ranking
guardsman, who now claimed the place left vacant at his right hand. 'Commander.
Do you honestly think we might be facing war?'
'Your Majesty,
that's unlikely.' Taskin's candour was forthright. What did Sessalie possess,
that could be worth a vicious siege, a campaign supplier's nightmare,
destined to be broken by the early winter storms that howled, unforgiving,
through the ranges? Only Anja posed the key to disarm such defences. Threat
to her could unlock all three of the citadel's moated gates without a
fight.
Within the
royal palace, her loss might break King Isendon's fragile wits within
a week, or a day, or an hour. Prince Kailen lacked the hardened maturity
to rein in the fractious council nobles. The seneschal was clever with
accounting, but too set in his ways to keep the young blood factions close
at heel.
Sessalie needed
the sea trade to sweeten the merchants and bolster a cash-poor council
through the uncertainty of the coming succession.
Yet the petty
slights and tangles spun by court dissension were not for Devall's ears.
Anja's offered hand must not imply a bleeding weakness, or invite the
licence to be annexed as a province.
Lest the pause
give the opening to tread dangerous ground, the Commander of the Guard
tossed a bone to divert the High 's agile perception. 'The crown needs
its eyes and ears in the sewers under Highgate. Captain Myshkael may be
a misbegotten southern mongrel, but he keeps the city garrison trimmed
into fighting shape. Knows his job; I checked his background. We want
him keen and watchful, and not hackled like a man who's been insulted.'
The High Prince
of Devall drummed irritable fingers, his ruby seal glaring like spilled
blood. 'I don't give a rice grain if the man's low born, or the get of
a pox-ridden harlot! Let him find the Princess Anja, I'll give him a villa
on the river, a lord's parcel of mature vineyards, and a tax-free stamp
to run a winery.'
Commander Taskin
had no words. His arid glance pricked to a wicked spark of irony, he had
eyes only for the man in the plain cloak just ushered through the privy
chamber door. The hood he tossed back unmasked his dark skin, the honesty
a tactical embarrassment. Yet his brazen pride was not invulnerable. The
soft, limping step – worse than Taskin remembered – was strategically
eclipsed behind the taller bulk of Collain Herald.
That court
worthy trundled to an awkward stop. Scarlet-faced, he delivered the requisite
bows to honour vested sovereign and heir apparent. Blindingly resplendent
in his formal tabard with its border of gold ribbons, and Sessalie's falcon
blazon stitched in jewelled wire, Collain announced the person the king's
word had summoned.
'Attend! In
his Majesty's name, I present Myshkael, Captain of the Garrison.'
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