The Warrior's Bond (Einarinn 4) (42 page)

“You didn’t really believe all that, Verd?” Ryshad was incredulous. “I’d have thought Naer would have taught you better than that.”

“Watch your mouth, Rysh,” said Naer with a fair approximation of a laugh.

“Verd, that pile of shit had few enough brains to begin with,” Ryshad said reassuringly. “Throw enough of a scare into his sort and any sense he’s got left goes dribbling out of his arse.”

“Sounded cursed convincing to me,” the sworn muttered.

“Of course it did,” Ryshad agreed. “I’ve got a brother who argues before the Imperial courts, and another who’s a stonemason—you should hear him convincing some poor sailor to build a house three times bigger than the one he had planned.” That got a laugh all around the room.

“How did he know his name though?” a sworn man by the door hissed.

Temar spoke up at the same moment. “Does anyone know this tavern, the Valiant Flag? What about this man who calls himself Knife?”

Someone laughed, abruptly silenced by a glare from Ryshad. “Master Knife’s a character in half the tales the puppetry men put on,” he explained. “You’ll find three down every alley at Festival.”

“But we can turn the Valiant Flag over and shake it till something falls out,” said Naer with relish. “Verd, drum up the sworn and put the fear of the lash into the recognised. They’ll be on watch for the rest of the night.”

“I’ll need my sword,” Ryshad told him.

“When do we leave?” Temar felt growing excitement.

“You’re not coming!” Naer told him. “I’m not taking you down to the cloth yards, the Sieur would have my hide. Nor you, Rysh. All the proven are out being entertained, Stoll’s down at the sword school even supposing he’s still upright. You’re senior man on the watch tonight, my friend, and that means you get the gate.”

“Naer!” Ryshad protested.

“He got in on my Watch, Rysh.” Naer’s face turned ugly. “I’ll go and slap his pal in chains, not you. You lot, get yourself in hand!”

Temar watched Naer round up his troops, driving them through the gate with a mixture of harsh curses and warm encouragement.

“I’m too tired for this,” Ryshad said absently. He sighed. “So we get the gate, well, I do. Go to bed, Temar; one of us might as well get some sleep.”

“I’ll wait with you,” Temar insisted. “I must tell Avila what’s occurred as soon as she returns.”

“And I can tell Messire and Camarl,” said Ryshad without enthusiasm. He pulled up a stool by the watch room fire as a handful of eager young men in livery appeared. “You, go and get the makings for some tisanes from the kitchens, will you? Plenty of white amella. And do any of you know your way around the North Bay well enough to take a letter?”

Temar watched as Ryshad rummaged in the sergeant’s desk for paper and ink. “I’ll have that pen after you,” he said.

CHAPTER FIVE

Preface to the Chronicle of D’Olbriot,

Under the Seal of Sieur Glythen, Winter Solstice

in the 13th Year of Decabral the Virtuous

The Convocation of Princes was a fraught affair this year, and even allowing for the defences of wax and honour I wonder quite what I should record within these leaves. But I have my own duty to discharge, to leave an accurate record for those that take up the guardianship of our House after me. Raeponin be my witness and let the truth shame any hostile eyes that read this.

The proximate cause of the uproar among the Princes was an intemperate declaration sent to the Adjurist from the city of Col in the erstwhile province of Einar Sai Emmin. It has long been a treasured hope among the sons of Decabral that Col might be the first lost outpost reclaimed from the ashes of the Chaos and thus a foundation on which to build a new Empire among those ragged lordlings of the west. I would say any such expectation is now irretrievably dashed by the hostility provoked by Decabral“s highhanded actions over this last year. This parchment over the seal of the Elected firstly confirms that the leading citizens of Col have revived their bygone forms of governance, and secondly vigorously refutes our Emperor’s assertion that any such rule based on Old Imperial practice must acknowledge his suzerainty. The snub implicit in addressing this document to the Adjurist Den Perinal was unmistakable and served only to rouse Decabral”s ire still further.

The Sieurs Tor Kanselin and Den Sauzet roundly rebuked the Emperor’s behaviour in making such a declaration, particularly given all the Convocation’s advice to the contrary last winter. Den Perinal agreed, saying hasty actions in times of uncertainty seldom prosper, making reference in the same breath to the confusion among the Princes after the unexpected death of the Emperor’s late brother the Nervous. I dared hope such an attack might provoke Decabral into some folly but he restrained himself, choosing to argue in angry defence that securing Col is crucial to restraining the aspirations of the self-declared Dukes of Lescar and resurgent ambition in the Caladhrian Parliament. The Sieur Tor Arrial agreed that Tormalin strength in arms to east and west might well give both provinces pause for thought. This prompted widespread astonishment before Tor Arrial turned his speech to scathing condemnation of Decabral’s fantasies. He speculated whether such nonsense was the result of overindulgence in strong liquors, aromatic smokes or apothecaries’ nostrums, to wide amusement.

I had thought Tor Arrial might call for a formal censure but he sees as well as the rest of us that those Sieurs he has so hastily ennobled over the past ten years still slavishly support Decabral. Since these lapdogs know full well their place by the fireside depends solely on their master throwing them his half-gnawed bones, they will certainly defend him. We had thought Den Ferrand and D’Estabel were wavering over the summer but the Emperor bought their loyalty afresh with grants of monopoly rights to tax salt and lead production.

My sole consolation is that such typically shortsighted behaviour has only served to alienate the differing factions within Tor Decabral still further. The Empress’s supposedly temporary departure for the Solland estates is now widely seen as a permanent move and her house there is taking on the air of a court in exile. Now that her eldest son is of age, he is of increasing interest to those scions of the Name who have been content to suffer Decabral the Virtuous’s tactlessness for the sake of keeping the Imperial throne within the family. The Emperor’s elder brother, Messire Manaire, has held himself aloof, and his own estates in Moretayne have long been a sanctuary for those hostile to the present regime. He was present in Toremal for Festival for the first time in some handful of years and made no secret of the extensive Solstice gifts he had sent his sister by marriage. Messire Manaire is past the age where he could reasonably expect elevation to Imperial honours, but his own sons would be well placed to succeed any son of the Empress who could succeed his father in short order. More significantly his trusted advisors have been hinting Manaire has finally forgiven his sister Maitresse Balene for her oppositon to his own ambitions on the death of their father, the Patient. Her marriage into Den Leoril could prove highly significant as her covey of daughers is now so widely married into so many influential families.

While many of us would prefer to see a complete change of dynasty, we might settle for a change of Imperial incumbent, since that would at least enable those newly ennobled Houses so dependent on Tor Decabral patronage to cover their treachery with a modest veil of continued loyalty to the Name. The year that opens with the dawn so rapidly approaching promises to be an interesting one.

The D’Olbriot Residence Gatehouse,

Summer Solstice Festival, Fourth Day, Morning

Shapeless horrors crushed me, faceless and formless, weaving a nightmare of inexorable, suffocating foulness out of my inarticulate terror.

“Chosen Tathel?” The soft but insistent knock at the door was repeated. “Ryshad?”

I woke with a start, and for one choking moment it seemed the torment had come too, breaking out of my dreams to smother me. Then I realised someone had come in during the night and drawn the bed curtains closed around me, doubtless meaning to be kind. My heart slowed from its chest-bursting race.

“Yes?” I wished a silent pox on the uninvited curtain puller and for whoever was waking me up.

“There’s a note.” The door muffled the voice.

Ripping back the curtains, I went to untie the latchstring. One of Stolley’s newer lads held out a neatly sealed letter addressed in sloping Lescari script. He hovered hopefully, waiting for me to open the subtly fragrant folds.

“That’ll be all, thanks.” I took the note with a grin and shut the door on his disappointed face. Leaning against it, I closed my eyes. Just at that moment, all I really wanted was one morning when I could sleep myself out, when I didn’t have to get up for anything, not fire, flood or Poldrion’s demons raising havoc round the residence.

Snapping the wax seal, I read the few terse lines from Charoleia. She’d be taking the air on the old ramparts between the second and third chimes of the day, would she? I’d better get up there. I threw the window open, welcoming fresh air in to drive out the last remnants of nightmare and made myself presentable, hampered by a hand stiffened to near immobility. Unstrapping it showed me puffy knuckles dark with deep bruises. The cursed thing had kept me awake even after all my exertions, even after that highly uncomfortable interview with the Sieur well past midnight. I’d finally given in and taken a cup of tahn tea from Naer and I was paying for that now with a foul mouth and woolly wits, not to mention the horrors that had got through my sleeping guard.

This was no time for me to be less than fighting fit, I concluded reluctantly, rebandaging it as best I could one handed and resisting the temptation to scratch the stitches that were itching as the cursed things always do. I’d have to ask Demoiselle Avila for some healing. Temar was right, loath as I was to admit it. I couldn’t turn down help I needed just because it came from Artifice. I only hoped the lady would be in a better mood this morning. She and the Sieur had arrived at nearly the same moment the night before, and the last I’d seen of Temar, Avila had been scolding him back to the residence, her consternation at the loss of the artefacts blistering his ears.

But the housemaids wouldn’t even have unshuttered Avila’s windows yet, so that would have to wait. I walked out of the gatehouse, sorely tempted to send round to the stables for a coach. No, the fewer people who knew what I was about the better. At least it was all downhill to the Spring Gate, and once I’d climbed the steps to the walls of the old city I had a cool salt-tinted breeze to clear my head.

As with most things, the old walls of Toremal hold up an example many lesser cities would have been wise to follow. Cities like Solland and Moretayne are both protected by a ring of masonry topped with a parapet three men wide, watch turrets set at every angle. But Solland fell to Lescari raids three times in the days of Aleonne the Resolute, and Aldabreshin pirates sailed forty leagues up river to raze Moretayne to the ground. It took Decabral the Pitiless to burn the isles of the eastern coast to barren ashes and finally drive the Archipelagans out.

The walls of Toremal have never been breached, not even in the worst excesses of the Chaos. On the outer face an immense wall of massive stones carries towers at regular intervals, each big enough to hold a fighting troop and close enough to reinforce its neighbours. They’re backed with a colossal rampart of raised earth, levelled and reinforced in turn by an inner wall, the finest work any mason will see inside a season’s travel. Three men can walk abreast round the walls of Solland or Moretayne; three coaches can drive abreast round Toremal’s rampart.

But I was too early for the elegant gigs and smartly groomed horses that carry the wealthy and fashionable around the walls in these peaceable times. The nobility don’t lead their cohorts in defence of the walls these days, they come to see and be seen, to flaunt their status and compete with their rivals far above the heads of the common folk. The serious business of socialising would start when the heat of the day had passed, so this early in the morning the rampart was deserted but for a few individuals taking a walk. I followed the neatly swept earthen path, grass on either side clipped short around fragrant trees planted to shade benches for discreet conversation or safe flirtation. Passing the sharply pitched roofs of the old city on the one hand and the sprawling mass of newer building on the other, I looked briefly inside the Flemmane tower. Along with several others, it had been transformed into an elegant summerhouse where a lady might take a tisane or perhaps a little chilled wine carried up by dutiful servants.

There was no one inside. Where was Charoleia? I finally found her as the ramparts approached the Handsel Gate, where the Prime way leaves the city for the road to the north. Her elegance was unmistakable even draped in a sedate dun cloak. She was talking to some maidservant clutching a creamy shawl over a brown gown smudged with ash. I walked past, pausing some way beyond to examine a statue. It turned out to be Tyrial, Sieur D’Estabel, Adjurist to the Convocation of Princes under Bezaemar the Canny. I’d never heard of him.

“Good morning.” Charoleia appeared at my side. “I’m sorry I wasn’t at home when your message came.”

I smiled at her. “This morning’s soon enough.”

“Shall we walk?” She looked for me to offer a gentlemanly arm.

I did so with some reluctance. “Please mind my hand.”

She tucked her hand lightly through my elbow. “I heard about your exploits in the practice ground. Most impressive.”

I wondered if she were teasing me. “Have you heard anything? Who put out the challenge in my name?”

“I’ve heard nothing beyond discreet satisfaction that you put Den Thasnet’s man down. That’s not a popular Name at present.” Charoleia shook dark hair dressed loose in glossy ringlets and I caught the same alluring, elusive scent that had perfumed her letter. She wore a light, rose-coloured gown beneath her cloak and a single ruby ring graced her delicate hand. “So what did you want? Your boy told Arashil it was urgent.”