Authors: Jude Fisher
Under the timbers was the body of little Marin Edelsen. Her eyes were wide blue and her expression was surprised. A red wound gaped in her neck.
And beyond her, in the high seat of Rockfall, sat Hesta Rolfsen, Katla’s grandmother, matriarch and conniver in schemes, a redoubtable old woman with a scurrilous laugh and a wicked eye. She had boasted to all who would listen that she would outlive them all, that she intended to survive Sur himself and his battle with both wolf and snake. But now she was stone dead with her feet set neatly together on the floor and her hands clasped around the carved dragonhead armrests. Her limbs were burned so that the bones gleamed white ivory amongst all the char, but even as death had eaten at her, she had flinched from her seat not at all.
Thirty
Pursuit
Tanto Vingo had discovered that his brother had escaped from Jetra when he sent two of the cheapest and most disfigured whores he could find to Saro’s room dressed so immodestly that their slit tongues and scaly arms were on view to all, knowing that talk of it would be over all the castle by morning. When the women came back bemused and weeping to report him gone, Tanto fell into the most terrifying fury. He hurled himself out of his wheeled chair, he foamed at the mouth; he drummed rigid, and previously inert, limbs in a powerful tattoo upon the floor. The coarsest of swearwords poured from his mouth. He cursed: the Goddess, her adepts, her cat, her fires, her devotees, the Southern Empire, its lords, its women and whores; the Eternal City, Jetra’s castle, the guards, Lord Tycho Issian, his sorcerer, his crystal, all nomad magic-makers, his father, his uncle, his ancestors, and of course his brother. It was a tantrum the like of which none of the Jetran women had seen before, never wished to see again; and they had seen far too much of the world as it was. They thought he was possessed by demons, or by the spirits of the long-dead which walked the chilly corridors of the fortress when all warm flesh was safe abed. When he levered himself upright and took out his wrath on the whore named Celina, ramming her against the wall and smashing her head on the plaster till she passed out, Folana fled in terror from the chamber and ran to fetch help.
She knew the passages of the castle well: in her youth she had been comely enough to earn a few cantari from the nobles of the city, before plague and punishment had come to her and left her as she was now. So instead of seeking the guest quarters, she took herself swiftly to the servants’ parlour and pleaded with the second steward to intervene.
Frano Filco found Tanto Vingo’s father and uncle in the company of Lord Rui Finco and Lord Tycho Issian. Frano had served in Jetra’s Castle for fourteen years and only been flogged the once: he was deference itself. ‘My lord,’ he said, bobbing his head and misaddressing Favio Vingo. ‘My lord, your son is . . . unwell.’
Favio looked surprised. His turbaned head bobbed awkwardly. ‘Saro? He’s just a bit lily-livered, is all: no stomach for war: probably just feeling a bit off-colour before he marches out with the troop.’
Frano shook his head. ‘No, lord, no: your other son—’ He searched and failed to recall Tanto’s name. ‘The—’ He had been going to say ‘cripple’, but thought better of it just in time.
‘Tanto?’ Now Favio was on his feet, looking anxious. ‘What’s wrong with him?’
But Frano would say nothing: the wrath of nobles was unpredictable and could fall down upon you for a word out of place. Instead, he led the men to Tanto’s chamber, where they found the subject on the floor with the naked prostitute, inscribing something redly into her yielding, unconscious flesh with a fruit knife.
Fabel Vingo and Rui Finco looked away, embarrassed, as Favio fell to his knees at his son’s side and took the knife away from Tanto’s unresisting fingers, all the while crooning, ‘Tanto, Tanto, calm yourself: all will be well, my boy, all things shall be well.’
Tycho Issian took in the scene with a raised eyebrow, then moved a little distance to the left, where he might have a better view of the whore’s legs.
‘Fetch Cleran,’ the Lord of Forent said softly to Frano. ‘Quickly. Take the whore back to where she lives and give her this for her silence—’ He tipped a stream of silver coins into the man’s hands. ‘And this for yourself and Cleran—’ More money followed.
‘The boy is possessed,’ Tycho observed curiously.
‘No, no,’ Favio denied. ‘He is merely unwell, unsettled by something.’ He cradled his son’s head. ‘Tanto, my boy, tell me what has happened—’
He glanced down at the whore’s arm, where bleeding letters spelled out three letters of a familiar name and knew with sudden horrid instinct that his second son had fled the city. He had been half-expecting it these past days since plans for the coming conflict had escalated to the point of detail and he had watched Saro’s face grow paler and more haggard as Lord Tycho Issian had described his plans for storming the northern capital and bringing redemption to its womenfolk. He had his own misgivings about the Lord of Cantara’s sanity, especially when the man started raving about the punishments he would inflict upon the Eyran king, and Saro was a delicate boy; too delicate for the task assigned to him, it seemed. Even so, he managed to feign a degree of surprise as Tanto wailed: ‘Saro’s gone, escaped us all! Little bastard—’
Now it was the Lord of Cantara’s turn to be furious. ‘Sir!’ he said stridently, fixing Favio Vingo with his mad gaze, ‘Is this true? Has your second son deserted?’
Favio looked unhappy at the use of this word. Desertion carried a heavy penalty in time of war. Even if Saro had left Jetra, he would prefer to think of his departure as a leavetaking, an absence, a straying. ‘I know not, my lord,’ he replied.
Fabel stepped forward and took his brother by the arm. ‘I will go look in his chambers,’ he said reassuringly. ‘I am sure there is just some misunderstanding here. Saro would never willingly shirk his duties, however distasteful he might find them.’ He shot the Lord of Cantara a pointed look which went entirely unnoticed, and strode off down the corridor, relieved to be away from the unhealthy atmosphere.
But Saro was not in his chambers, nor was he in the solar, nor the kitchens, nor out in the gardens. No one had seen him. And when Fabel took himself off down to the stables and found his prize stallion also missing, it was hard to deny the likelihood that the boy had run away. Moreover, it soon transpired that the Lord of Cantara’s strange servant – the albino known as Virelai – had also disappeared.
This last transported Tycho Issian into a towering rage. To lose the boy was one thing, for he could easily be replaced: there were a hundred such younger sons vying for the favour of the foremost lords of the land; but to lose the sorcerer was another disaster altogether. They had amassed a considerable stock of false silver now, it was true – enough to pay for the construction of the ships they needed; but his plan for resucing the Rose of the World from the grasp of the barbarian king pivoted on the deployment of a sorcery which the apprentice mage had been perfecting these past months. He was indispensable.
Overstepping his authority, he sent out the criers to declare a bounty: for Saro Vingo’s head, seven thousand cantari: for the safe return of his servant and the black cat with which he always travelled, twenty thousand. No one dared gainsay him. Hesto and Greving Dystra, nominal heads of the ruling Istrian Council, having worked themselves up into a fluster, finally granted an audience to the deserter’s father, then added another ten thousand cantari for the capture of the Vingo boy alive and well, and a further five hundred for the stallion.
Reports of sightings came flooding in. The three had been seen – in company, and journeying alone – as far away as the Blue Woods in the north and the Bone Quarter in the south. Riders sped out from the Eternal City in all directions. A large contingent on fleet horses set out for Altea Town, in case Saro Vingo had foolishly headed for his homeland. Others travelled north-east to the White Downs and thence to Forent. A small group of six riders made for the Golden Mountains and the Dragon’s Backbone: it was deemed unlikely anyone would wish to seek shelter in such a wild and inhospitable area. The Southern Wastes were left to a volunteer force of hardened bounty hunters, for no regular troops would venture there: besides, if the heat did not kill the travellers, then the monsters which were reputed now to roam the area surely would. Another contingent took ship down the Tilsen River in order to beat the deserters to the ports at Galia, Tagur or Gila. The troop bound to investigate the sighting in the Blue Woods stopped in Lord’s Cross to water their horses, and made a swift visit to the Hawk’s Wing tavern to sample the renowned local brew.
Word got around that the soldiers were looking for ‘a young nobleman turned traitor by the name of Saro Vingo, an albino servant, a black cat and the stallion which carried the honours at the Allfair’.
One of the regulars tapped the captain on the shoulder. ‘Would that be a racing stallion? A black one?’
The captain shrugged his arm away from the man and fixed him with a suspicious stare. He did not like to be approached by strangers in quite such a forward manner, particularly one who did not honour him with a ‘sir’. ‘Indeed. What do you know?’ he asked shortly. ‘Have you seen such a horse?’
The man was tall and dark with closely set eyes and a thin mouth, which now twitched up into an unpleasant smile. ‘Not me personally, no; but some days back a gentleman by the name of – what was it now?’
He made a good pretence of rummaging through his memory until the captain grew impatient and tossed three coins onto the bar. The dark man picked them up, bit one of them hard and then examined it closely. As if this very act had jogged the information out into the light, he grinned broadly. ‘Lodu,’ he said. ‘Lodu saw them – or said he did – two men, a big cat and a racing stallion.’
No one had mentioned before that the cat was big, but the captain supposed that was a relative thing. ‘This Lodu: where can I find him?’
The dark man shrugged. ‘No idea,’ he declared, and grinned again.
‘Falcon’s Lair,’ said another man indistinctly.
‘What?’
‘Little hill village south of here. That’s where Lodu Balo lives.’
It took them two hours to reach Falcon’s Lair, by which time the entire troop was on the edge of mutiny. They had been looking forward to a jar and a game of cards all the hot, grimy way from the Eternal City to Lord’s Cross: trekking into the steep hill country to the south, in the dark, with no prospect of an ale at the end of it, was a decidedly unpopular decision. Having wasted another half hour trying to locate Lodu Balo’s house, which lay not in the tiny village itself, but a further mile into the hills up a narrow, treacherous path frequented by owls and bats, they were in the mood for a fight.
The woman who opened the door to them was tiny, dark and bore the clan tattoo of Gola down one cheek and a crystal around her neck.
‘Footloose!’ hissed the sergeant.
The woman shrieked and tried to close the door again, but the captain jammed his foot in it and forced it open. Five soldiers piled in behind him. Inside, the cot was bare and simple. On a low table in the centre lay numerous bunches of mixed herbs – rosemary and thyme, oregano and marjoram, hensfoot and pyrea – tied with raffia ready for hanging to dry. The captain picked one up and sniffed it suspiciously, then recoiled sharply.
‘Witchery!’ he declared, throwing the bundle down on the floor and stamping on it hard. He turned to the troop. ‘Take the rest of this stuff and burn it.’ He paused. ‘Her, too.’
‘What?’
The man who had entered the room from the adjoining chamber was blinking his eyes rapidly, as if he were unaccustomed to the light. His jaw was stubbly; his breath stank of garlic and wine.
‘What are you doing in here? And where are you taking my wife?’ asked Lodu Balo in a bellicose tone.
The sergeant grabbed him by the tunic and hoisted him up so that his feet were dangling. ‘That is a nomad magic-maker, a Footloose whore: what are you doing with her?’
Lodu looked horrified. ‘She’s my wife, she’s been my wife for twenty years. She’s not Footloose, she’s hillclan.’
‘Then why’s she messing around with this filthy sorcery?’
‘She grows herbs – I sell them at the market, alongside our produce—’
‘So, you admit to selling spellcraft, do you?’
‘No—’
A fist caught him in the gut so that he doubled up with a bubbling breath. By the time he straightened up, three of the soldiers had dragged his wife outside. He could hear her crying, ‘Lodu, Lodu, save me!’, cries punctuated by wheezes and yelps, as if someone were kicking her as they might a stray dog.
‘I swear!’ he wailed. ‘I sweaaarrr . . .’
The captain put his face close to Lodu’s. ‘Two men, a “big” cat and a black stallion. Mean anything to you?’
Lodu’s eyes went round as plates.
‘I—’ he stammered. ‘I saw them, yes, on the crest of the hills south of here.’
‘When?’
‘Market-day, last month,’ he blurted out, suddenly full of relief, for it was not something he had done, nor his hill-wife, either, which had brought these soldiers here. ‘Very clear, I saw them, heading south, and what struck me as odd – apart from the cat, you know – was that these two men had this fine horse and neither of them was riding it; yet they’d clearly been walking all night – it was just past dawn and I’d set out early for the market at Lord’s Cross to make sure the fruit didn’t get overripe in the heat and, well, there’s nowhere for miles such lordly men could have come from . . .’
‘A day’s walk from Jetra, maybe; or a night’s?’
Lodu nodded.
‘And they were headed where?’
‘South,’ Lodu replied eagerly. ‘South and east. The sun was behind them, I remember it well.’ There was no sound from outside: they must have let his wife go. Something occurred to him. ‘Is there a reward for this information?’ he asked, licking his lips.
The captain smiled pityingly at him. ‘Reward? Falla’s reward maybe.’
Lodu frowned, trying to work this out. He had never been quick off the mark; but even if he had managed to grasp the man’s meaning it would have made little difference to his fate. The frown was his last expression. The captain clubbed him over the head with the pommel of his dagger so that he crumpled to the floor.