Ravens Shadow 02 - Tower Lord (35 page)

Reva’s eyes tracked to the steps above, seeing bloody footprints on the stone, overlapping each other in a red collage.
More than one. Probably more than two.
The realisation was cold and implacable. The Sons, it had to be.
The Sons are here, and they have not come for me.

Her immediate instinct was to flee. The manor would soon be in an uproar, bringing danger but also the chance to slip away in the confusion, carrying her prize . . .

They’re going to kill my uncle.

That this undeniable fact was unwelcome surprised her. Her only living blood relative, a man she had never met but been raised to despise, was about to die alongside his Asraelin whore.
A just end for the Father’s betrayer, and for his heretic slut.
She tried to force some passion into the thought but it remained a listless inward recitation of long-held dogma, empty and insincere in the face of the atrocity confronting her gaze.

What about her?
she wondered, continuing to stare at the face of the murdered girl.
What end did she deserve?

She found herself climbing the stairs, stepping over the corpse on silent feet, sword held in front of her in a two-handed grip. The bloody footprints faded as she climbed higher, but still left enough gore for her to follow, all the way to the top. She crouched before turning the final corner, using the blade of the butcher’s knife as a mirror, edging it out to afford a view of the last flight of steps, seeing dark shapes moving in a gloomy hallway. No-one had been left to guard their line of retreat, a curious error . . . unless there was no expectation of danger.

She turned the corner and ascended to the hallway. There were three of them, dressed all in black, including the silk scarves covering their faces. Each held a sword, light Asraelin blades, not the like the clumsy bar of sharpened steel she held. They were crouched before a door, outlined in yellow light from the room beyond where voices could be heard, a man and a woman. The woman sounded tense, angry even, the man weary, and drunk. The words “archers” and “foolish” were audible amidst the muffled babble. The man closest to the door reached up to grasp the handle.

“Why did you kill the girl?” Reva asked.

They whirled as one, the man close to the door rising to his full height, green eyes staring at her in appalled recognition, eyes she knew well.

She took an involuntary step back, the sword sagging in her grasp, air escaping her lungs in a rush. “I”—she choked, coughed, forced the words out, holding up the sword—“I found it. See?”

The green eyes narrowed and a voice came from behind the scarf, hard, flat and certain, as it had been every time he beat her. “Kill her!” the priest said.

The man closest to her lunged, sword extended, the point seeking her neck. Her counter was automatic and largely the fruit of Al Sorna’s teaching, the heavy sword coming up to sweep the stabbing point aside as she stepped back, ducking under a following slash. Behind her attacker the priest kicked the door open and charged in, sword raised for a killing thrust, a shout of astonishment sounding from a female throat.

Reva side-stepped another thrust, jabbed fingers into her attacker’s eyes then brought the heavy sword up and round to hack into his leg below the knee, biting deep into the flesh. She left him writhing and screaming, leaping clear and charging into the bedroom.

The priest’s companion had his back to her, slashing repeatedly at something on the bed, something that wriggled in a thick welter of bedclothes, feathers billowing as the blade tore through the quilts. Reva slammed the sword into his back, putting all her weight behind the blade as it speared him between the shoulder blades to jut an inch from his chest, blood erupting from his mouth as he arched his back, collapsing lifeless to the floor.

Reva had expected to find the Fief Lord dead but instead he gaped up at her from his protective swaddle of quilts, his only injury a small cut to the cheek. Shouts of fury dragged Reva’s gaze to the other side of the bed where the priest was battling the Lady Veliss. She lunged at him with a short rapier, teeth bared in a snarl, a torrent of foul abuse issuing from her lips with every thrust. “You cock-munching fucker! I’ll make you eat your own balls!”

For all her fury, Reva was impressed with her control, the thrusts were quick, precise and not over-extended, forcing the priest back, away from the bed. He parried without difficulty, the blade moving in a fluid series of arcs, the way it had when he blocked Reva’s attempts to find a way past with her knife. Despite her skills, Veliss proved to be outmatched, the priest finding an opening as he feinted a jab at her eyes then swung a punch to her face, sending her sprawling.

Reva scooped up the fallen sword of the man she had killed, placing herself between the priest and the bed.

He stared at her in outraged frustration. “You forsake the Father’s love with this betrayal!” he screamed, skin reddening about his eyes. “Al Sorna’s Darkness has twisted you!”

“No,” she whispered, hating the tears that streamed from her eyes. “No, you did that.”

“Filthy, Fatherless sinn—”

She lunged, fast and low, the blade straight and true, finding his thigh, coming free bloody as he twisted away with a howl.

A shout and the thunder of many feet drew her gaze back to the door before she could press the advantage. The priest hefted a stool and threw it at the nearest window, glass shattering amidst the billowing curtain. He glanced back at her once, eyes bright with hate, then turned and ran, leaping through the remains of the window.

Reva dropped her sword and stared at the curtain as it coiled in the night breeze, the sky beyond black and empty. Metal scraped from scabbards and shouts of challenge filled her ears as rough hands closed on her.

“STOP!” The command filled the room, stilling the tumult.

The Fief Lord cursed as he disentangled himself from the bedclothes, stumbling into her gaze though she barely saw him, her eyes still fixed on the curtain and the window.

“Look at me,” he said, voice gentle, fingers soft on her chin. She looked into the red-rimmed eyes of her uncle and saw tears there as he smiled, his lips forming a fond murmur. “Reva.”

T
hey lived in the wild for ten days, deep in the forested hills north of South Tower, far away from any roads or likely patrol routes. Still they were hunted, the South Guard venturing far and wide with dogs and trackers, forcing them to move camp every day, sometimes laying false trails towards the Cumbraelin border. The need to keep moving made hunting a rare luxury so they grew hungry, sustained by what mushrooms and roots they could scavenge on the move, huddling together for warmth at night for they dared not risk a fire.

The woman was mostly silent now, still brooding over her failure, a new uncertainty having crept into her gaze. Frentis wanted to find comfort in the change, to be heartened by this signal of frailty, but instead saw a greater threat brewing behind her eyes. He knew her now, though he hated the knowledge, knew that whatever reflection she indulged in could only lead to a fiercer devotion to killing. She might hate others for their gods but she worshipped murder with all the fervour of the worst Cumbraelin fanatic.

“I do not blame you, beloved,” she said one night, the first words she had spoken in days. “Do not think that. I can only blame myself, I see that now. My love for you has made me exultant, Revek’s gift complacent, and so I allowed myself the illusion of invulnerability. A hard lesson, as are all true lessons.”

On the tenth day they found an old forester’s cottage, overgrown and tumbled down, but retaining enough shelter to conceal a fire come nightfall. Frentis went foraging and returned with the usual roots and mushrooms but also a hand-caught trout, heaved from a nearby stream when it ventured too close to the bank. He gutted it, wrapped it in dock leaves and baked it in the fire, the woman wolfing down her share with feral enthusiasm. “Hunger is always the best seasoning,” she said when it was all gone, the first smile in days appearing on her lips.

Frentis finished his own meal and said nothing.

“You’re worried,” she went on, shuffling closer, pressing herself against his side. “Wondering who’s next when we get to Varinshold. Although, I think you already know.”

Frentis found he much preferred her introspective mood, and was allowed enough freedom to say so. She rarely bound his tongue now, seeming to find some comfort in the rare words he spoke, however lacking in affection they might be.
Why couldn’t you just die in South Tower?
he wanted to say, but paused. He knew they were approaching something, a moment of fulfilment for whatever insane purpose she served, and he had divined sufficient insight by now to know what that would mean. “Are you open to a bargain?” he asked instead.

This drew a frown of genuine puzzlement. “A bargain, my love?”

“My love,” he repeated. “You call me that all the time, and you mean it, don’t you? You’ve lived so long, but you’ve never loved, not until me.”

Her face lost all expression, save a faint wariness to the eyes, and she nodded, probably in expectation of another barb or hate-filled declaration.

“You want me, all of me,” he continued. “You can have me. We can be together, for as long as you want, you’ll never have to force me again. I’ll never fight you again. We go, we leave, we find some forgotten place, far away from people. And we stay there, just you and me.”

Her face remained immobile but for a faint twitch to her lips, an occasional blink to her eyes.

“You can read my feelings,” he said. “So you know I am sincere in this.”

When she spoke her voice was thick, whether with anger or sorrow he couldn’t tell. “You think that’s what I want?”

“No, it’s what I’m offering.”

“In return for what?”

“Turn away from this path, no more killing. Abandon whatever task waits in Varinshold.”

She closed her eyes and turned away, profile red and perfect in the firelight. “When I was as young as you are now, I knew only hate. A hate as bright and glorious as any love, the kind of hate that calls across the void when married to a gifted song, finding the ear of something that also had a bargain to offer. And I made it, beloved. I made that bargain, sealed it in an ocean of blood, so I can’t make yours.”

She opened her eyes, turning to him, her expression betraying such a depth of sadness and confusion he found it hard to look at her. “You talk of finding a forgotten place. There are no forgotten places, not for the Ally. Our only chance is to fulfil his scheme, don’t you see? Give him his moment of triumph, the last stroke of the brush to his grand design, only then can we make our own. Then, my love, then I promise you, there will be no need for forgotten places, no need to hide. We’ll give him his victory, then burn it all down and him with it.”

He looked away and she moved closer, her arms slipping around his waist as her head rested on his shoulder. “I’m going to kill you,” he said. “You must know that.”

She kissed his neck and for once he didn’t flinch, though he had the freedom to do so. “Then, beloved,” she said in a whisper, breath hot on his neck, “you would doom yourself and every soul in this world.”

◆ ◆ ◆

They hid for another three days until all sign of pursuit had faded, the forest free of the distant barking of dogs or the scent of soldiers’ fires. They journeyed north, remaining cautious, avoiding roads and well-trammelled tracks, too wary even to risk stealing from the few farmhouses they saw. The woman’s purpose consumed her now, allowing no chance of failure. She spoke rarely, made no more use of him at night. They travelled, they slept, they foraged, nothing more.

It was another two weeks before they reached the flatlands and the road to the Brinewash Bridge, both notably thinner and besmirched from so long in the wilds, something the woman seemed to find comfort in. “Escaped slaves are rarely well-fed,” she said the night before they were to enter the city. They camped on the riverbank a few miles upstream from the bridge, lacking any coin for the toll and wary of drawing the eye of any guards who might be in attendance.

“We met in the pits,” she told him. “Two slaves thrown into the same cell in expectation we would breed. I was stolen from my people as a girl, one of the fierce northern tribes will do, the name doesn’t matter. They’re renowned warriors, many of the Kuritai are bred from stock stolen from the northern wastes. I expected you to be bestial, inflicting your lust upon my innocent flesh, instead you were kind, in time love bloomed between us and we contrived an escape. Our journey across the empire was an epic of trial and bloody adventure, until we made it to Volar and concealed ourselves upon a ship to the west, sailing all the way to Varinshold, where you will be recognised by a kindly lord at the docks.”

She smiled thinly, reading his surprise at the mention of the kindly lord. “This has been long planned, my love. The Ally has many tools.”

◆ ◆ ◆

They swam across in the morning, the rising sun raising mist from the river as they fought the current to make the opposite bank. At the western gate guards waved approaching wagons to the side and pushed back travellers seeking entry. The reason became clear shortly afterwards as the first regiment trooped through the gate. Frentis recognised the standard, a boar with red tusks, the Thirtieth Regiment of Foot, wiped out at Untesh and now evidently reborn. Behind them came the Sixteenth, the Black Bears, followed by one regiment after another until it seemed the whole Realm Guard was on the march. They edged closer to a group of onlookers, hearing the words “Cumbrael” and “Tower Lord” most amongst the general chatter.

“Not such a failure after all,” the woman murmured as the Realm Guard continued to troop past.

Frentis counted ten full regiments of foot and five of cavalry before the final contingent emerged, a contrast to the others with their dark blue cloaks, mail and leather helms, marching under a banner emblazoned with a running wolf above a tower. Their Lord Marshal was younger than most men of such rank, possessed of an aura of competence and toughness undiminished by his comparatively slight stature. He was also dressed in the garb of a brother of the Sixth Order.

The binding surged as Frentis tried to call out, the words trapped in his chest the instant he thought them. The woman gave a regretful smile as she forced him to turn his face away. “Not a time for reunions, my love.”

So he was prevented from watching Caenis lead his Wolfrunners from Varinshold, and none of the veterans had cause to let their gaze linger on the bedraggled but sturdy beggar in the crowd.

◆ ◆ ◆

The western quarter was much as he remembered, a little cleaner perhaps, but all the streets, alleys and doorways of his youth were intact, although it seemed to have shrunk in the interval. As a child it had been a vast maze, one minute a playground for an impetuous thief, the other a deadly battleground when the gangs went to war. He was permitted to linger outside a boarded-up hovel on Jape Street. The woman who once lived there had long, straggly hair and eyes dulled with too much redflower, and a man who stank of piss and gin, knifed and bled dry behind a tavern over some forgotten grievance before Frentis was old enough to form a clear memory of his face. The straggle-haired woman disappeared soon after, to a brothel he heard, though some said she’d given herself to the river. If she had a name, he never knew it.

“Don’t worry,” the woman said, squeezing his hand. “It’ll all be gone soon enough. No more grim reminders for my husband.”

She led him to the warehouse district, halting before one with a chalked symbol on the door, a circle within a circle. She hammered on the door and waited. The man who answered the door was dressed in the mean garb of a sailor but Frentis knew him immediately as Kuritai, his stature and bearing made it obvious. He gave the woman a nod of respect rather than the full bow that would have been required in Volaria, then stepped aside. The warehouse was stacked high with barrels save for a bare section of floor in the centre where ten more Kuritai waited, scabbarded short swords within easy reach. They bowed to the woman as she entered. “Who is One here?” she asked.

The Kuritai from the door stepped forward. “I am, Mistress.”

“Everything is in readiness?”

“It is, Mistress.”

“What is your allotted target?”

“The palace. We attack one hour after your arrival there. After that we rendezvous at the north gate for the assault on the House of the Sixth Order.”

“How many?”

“All of the hidden companies, Mistress, plus a contingent of Free Cavalry. There should be five hundred in the assault force.”

The woman glanced at Frentis. “It won’t be enough. When the general comes ashore tell him the force is to be tripled, on my authority.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

She looked around, nose wrinkling at the musty air in the warehouse. “Is there any food in this shit-hole?”

The were given oatmeal porridge flavoured with berries, the standard fare of the Kuritai Frentis knew so well from the pits. Despite the growing dread that gripped him, his hunger made him wolf down two bowls in quick succession. He was scraping the bowl clean with his spoon when someone began pounding on the warehouse door.

The woman nodded to the One who gestured to two of his men. They drew swords and faded into the shadows on either side of the door before he opened it. The man who entered was tall and finely dressed, with smooth, somewhat delicate features marred by a fearful but determined expression. The woman rose as he came forward, offering him a respectful bow. “My lord.”

The man nodded, his eyes fixing on Frentis. “This is really him? The King will be quick to spot an impostor.”

“I assure you, my lord, this is Brother Frentis, brave comrade of King Malcius risen from the dead, as promised.”

The man’s gaze didn’t lift from Frentis. “Which hand does the King favour?”

Frentis replied without hesitation. “He writes with his left but wields a sword with his right. As a boy, his father forced him to suppress his natural inclination to use his left in sword practice, fearing it would be a disadvantage in battle.”

The man grunted in apparent satisfaction and the woman said, “Why would we seek to deceive you, my lord? Have we not kept every promise made so far?”

He ignored her question, eyes tracking around the warehouse. “Where is your usual agent? His face I know.”

“You’ll see it again, soon. When the city is ours and our arrangement complete.”

“I have another stipulation.”

It was just a slight curve to her lips, the smallest crease to her brow, but Frentis saw that this finely dressed lord had just earned himself a swift death. “Stipulation, my lord?”

The man nodded, licking his lips. He kept his hands within the folds of his sable-trimmed cloak, but Frentis knew they were shaking. “Princess Lyrna will soon return to Varinshold. The King will want her at his side when he welcomes his old comrade. She is not to be harmed, not in any way. She will be secured and placed in my care. My continued cooperation depends on this. I hope that’s clear.”

The woman inclined her head. “The princess is famed for her beauty, it would be churlish of us to deny you an additional reward.”