‘I understand it’s a lot of news for you to take in,’ said Leyla. ‘But it’s been a long time since you disappeared. Even when Willow returned alive carrying word of your achievements in far-called lands, we were never sure how you really fared. Your father’s been terribly concerned for you. Despite my best efforts, I fear he rather blamed Willow for returning without you.’
As well he might
. Duncan frowned. ‘Where is Willow now?’
‘Your sister’s here in the capital with your father. Willow will be eager to see you again; and I can’t wait to tell Benner of your safe return … he’ll be so happy.’ Her face turned thoughtful and concerned. ‘But you should understand that there have been a great many changes in Willow’s life. She’s now Lady Wallingbeck, the wife of the Viscount of Belinus Hall.’
‘A lady … and married? Now I know I’m dreaming.’ Duncan didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Shock after shock, in rapid succession, and nothing that could be called a true homecoming. It was as though he had slept for centuries and awakened to find everything familiar changed, with just enough left to confound him. But then, what had he expected? His father to go into mourning at the park, turning away all visitors and neglecting his business until he died of a broken heart? Willow playing the part of grief-stricken sibling for escaping to join the slave revolt, well knowing how damaging her treachery was to Duncan’s prospects. Actually, that was more or less how he had imagined matters progressing at home; but never
this
. How easily Duncan Landor’s presence had been supplanted, his existence lost among Weyland’s daily business. If Duncan had ever entertained any doubts about staying in the imperium and refusing the princess’s offer of passage back to Weyland, they vanished now.
I’m not home anymore. I’m as much a visitor here as Helrena and Paetro are.
‘Willow is expecting her first child,’ said Leyla. ‘The next Viscount Wallingbeck, with God’s benediction. Due to arrive a little after my own birth. Willow’s child and your new stepbrother will be small blessings in very troubled times.’
A child on the way already?
Saints, how Willow’s suffering in the sky mines must have changed her. No longer satisfied with her stupid library and a quiet, bookish life at home, she was married for position and title to an aristocrat? Expecting a child? The only way this was going to seem stranger was if it transpired Willow’s husband had been born in the Lancean Ocean and his sister was due to give birth to a mermaid. He sighed.
What in the world has been going on here in my absence?
‘My sister makes her own decisions. Always has and always will. On the way here I heard there was trouble in Weyland, but very little concerning its source?’
‘You will hear more of our troubles when the king speaks with the Vandians,’ said Leyla. ‘Our peace has been sundered by rebellion. The northern prefectures have declared for a pretender and are raising armies to fight King Marcus.’
Duncan concealed his shock. He had been raised in the most boring province of the most uninteresting country in the whole Lancean League, and yet, as soon as the slavers flew him over the border, the nation plunged into madness! ‘How can that be? Weyland’s been at peace for centuries. Has everyone gone mad while I’ve been away?’
‘When people forget their loyalty and chase ambition and greed instead, it’s easy enough for treachery to prosper. This must seem terribly strange to you. You arrive back home to find little is as it once was.’
‘Actually, there’s far too much that is the same.’
I never mattered a damn, here … only my position as heir to the Landor pile. With that gone, I might as well not have existed at all. But they’ll know me in Weyland now. That they will
.
‘King Marcus feels similarly to you,’ said Leyla, misunderstanding his words. ‘The king is a modernizer, and it’s the advances he’s gifted to our nation that have fed the traitors’ loathing and jealousy of his reign.’
Duncan bit back the cruel retort that any advances the king tried to make in Weyland were just a high-born savage playing with mud castles compared to what Vandia had achieved – all the resources of the world at the imperium’s command, born of fire in the great stratovolcano and captured in its net of sky mines. ‘Weyland should tread carefully, Mistress Landor. The imperium’s arrived to punish the indignity of the slave revolt. They want blood, and they won’t be too fussy about whose they need to spill.’
‘We have a Vandian embassy here now. From what little I know, we have tried to be good allies to the imperium.’
‘Vandia doesn’t have allies,’ said Duncan. ‘It has supplicants and it has foes.’
‘And how do you tell the difference?’
Duncan remembered the horde of foreign nobles lined up to bow and scrape before Emperor Jaelis in the Diamond Palace at the heart of Vandis. ‘One has kings on their knees; the other has monarchs cut off
below
the knees.’
‘That sounds less than ideal. Can we still count on you, Duncan Landor? Your people, your father, your house?’
‘I answer to a different house now. An imperial one. But I will do all I can to help Weyland. I wish no ill to anyone here.’
‘I am glad to hear it,’ said Leyla. She gently patted her wide belly. ‘And your father will thank you too, although you might have to wait a few years for your little brother to voice his gratitude. You are every bit as fine and brave as Benner described you.’
‘He said that about me?’
Leyla nodded. ‘Of course.’
‘Not so fine that he risked his neck to pursue the slavers that kidnapped me,’ said Duncan, bitterly. ‘Instead he paid Father Carnehan to come after us, a mere pastor, in his stead; Carnehan driven half-mad and become a wilding by the time he caught up with us.’
‘Do not tell Benner I said this to you,’ said Leyla, ‘he is too proud to have it known. But I was at Hawkland Park comforting your father when you and your sister were believed lost, far-called, in some hellish slave pit at the other end of the world. He wept every night, cursing the slavers and his family’s unkind fate. Benner would have joined the pursuit if he could have, but he had a wrecked town to rebuild, a prefecture full of broken families missing children, brothers, sisters, parents – either buried during the raid, or slaved and lost. To be the head of a great house is to be responsible for more than just his own blood. He carries that burden and he had to live up to it, whatever the personal cost.’
Duncan felt a twinge of guilt. Could it be true? Had Duncan really mattered to his father, beyond his obvious utility as heir to the house? Perhaps he had misjudged the man; believing him so ready to abandon his son and daughter to the slavers while he attended his all-important holdings. Duncan’s disconcertingly young stepmother took his hand and squeezed it kindly, joining the courtiers in the throne room after they entered the substantial chamber. Vandia’s visitors marched down a wide aisle at the centre of the hall towards the throne at the far end. Weylanders gawked at the interlopers from either side of the room with a mixture of fear, curiosity and uncertainty, splendid tapestries gazing down on them from the walls. Paetro hung back alongside Duncan, the imperial troops halted ahead of them. Helrena strode towards the throne with Prince Gyal and Baron Machus, although the two high nobles paid little heed to the princess by their side; not a single glance in her direction. Duncan could feel the chill under the high hammer-beam roof.
‘That’s the king of this land?’ whispered Paetro, staring with clear disbelief at the man seated on the throne. ‘He may wear a set of royal furs, but his face puts me in mind of a chief justice, thin ink running through his veins.’
Duncan shrugged without comment. He couldn’t deny it; whoever had illustrated King Marcus for the country’s newspapers had taken more than a few liberties to make that plain, pinched aspect look substantial and gallant. On Marcus, the crimson ermine-lined robes of the monarch were like too many clothes layered across an aged sickling relative to warm his bones against the winter.
‘Welcome, noble sons and daughter of Vandia. In comparison to Vandia we are but a poor land at the far end of the caravan routes,’ announced King Marcus, rising to open his arms towards the delegation. ‘But we have this to offer you … the hand of friendship raised against our common foe. Those that have struck against you have also struck against us … the traitors have raised a rebellion in the north of my realm, where they hold your noble emperor’s granddaughter as hostage.’ He was trying to sound commanding, but Duncan detected the anxiety in the voice.
Let him fear us, and with good cause
.
Helrena Skar stepped forward, her cousin Machus glancing coldly at the princess for interrupting. ‘Lady Cassandra is of my line, my daughter and heir to my house. Where is she to be found?’
‘Your noble daughter is being held prisoner in the city of Midsburg … the rebellion’s stronghold. Those that have plotted against me and conspired against the people of Weyland are the same rebels you pursue for their crimes against the Vandian people. Chief among them, the pretender to my throne, Owen Hawkins. He has fled his nest of villainy in the Burn, fearful of your justice, and even as we speak, he spreads his poison among my citizenry.’
Duncan didn’t know what the king what talking about.
Owen Hawkins
? The only Owen that Duncan had served with in the sky mines had been a grizzled survivor called Owen Paterson. And what did the war-wracked ruins of the Burn have to do with the empire? Whatever was going on, Prince Gyal appeared to be complicit in the scheme. This wasn’t so much diplomacy being conducted as a choreographed dance between two nations. Gyal pushed his cloak to the side and indicated the forces ranged behind him. ‘We require all those that have insulted the emperor’s honour to be returned for punishment in the imperium.’
‘I require my daughter returned,
alive
,’ Helrena interjected.
Prince Gyal waved her to silence with a stern stare.
‘I too have daughters,’ said King Marcus, nodding gravely. ‘And I completely understand your concern, Your Grace, which come honourably as both a mother and a loyal highborn of the imperium. You shall have the full weight of Weyland’s forces in returning the young woman to your care. My regiments have driven north, but we have not yet assaulted Midsburg for fear of inadvertently wounding Lady Cassandra or inciting her kidnappers to defile her person. My intelligencers believe she is in the custody of a notorious outlaw … a wretch called
Sariel
.’
‘Sariel Skel-Bane? He is wanted for execution,’ growled Prince Gyal. ‘The empire seeks that devil for a lengthy list of crimes … robbery, murder, rebellion.’
‘And I urge you to seek
peace
here,’ called out a man, emerging from a line of ambassadors waiting among the gathered courtiers. ‘Not seek brigands.’
‘This is Palden Tash,’ said King Marcus. ‘First Speaker of Rodal. His nation is also a member of the Lancean League.’
‘I know of Rodal,’ said Prince Gyal, his voice dripping with arrogant disdain. ‘As far as your coastal kingdoms’ local alliance is concerned, the embassy’s reports from the region have been acceptably thorough.’ He swivelled to look down on the Rodalians’ head of state. ‘Your advice is of as little concern to me, Rodalian, as the winds that beat upon your land’s barren peaks.’
Duncan frowned. Yet none of the embassy’s thoroughness had been directed towards Princess Helrena or her staff. Duncan could see Helrena fuming about being marginalized by Gyal and his minions, her cheeks burning bright with indignation. She was not used to being a spectator to affairs of state, but the would-be next emperor of Vandia was treating her with little more courtesy than the legionaries he had marched into the palace at his rear.
Palden Tash rapped his cane of office against the marble floor, the sound echoing across the throne room like a pistol report. ‘Then you should know Rodal and the Lanca have strongly counselled for an end to these hostilities. The league nations have held back from intervention. We do not wish to incite further escalations in fighting. Your forces must leave Weyland’s shores. From what I understand, you have arrived from a region of Pellas far-called beyond the reach of normal trade and common alliance. It is not your empire’s place to support one side or another in a remote civil conflict. Return to your homeland in peace and allow the Lanca to mediate a lasting settlement here.’
Duncan winced. The first speaker shared his people’s reputation for blunt talking, but you did not address a member of the Vandian celestial caste in such a haughty manner. Unfortunately, Palden Tash seemed blithely unaware of his miscalculation.
Prince Gyal nodded, thoughtfully. ‘
Must depart
? You make an interesting point. Allow me to counter it.’ Gyal raised his arm and his troops surged forward, seizing Palden Tash. Before Duncan could gather his thoughts, the soldiers had gagged the Rodalian and dragged him struggling furiously across to a high wall. Gyal’s legionaries untied the rope holding a pennant aloft and wrapped its cord around the Rodalian’s neck, hoisting him up inside the chamber between two tall stained-glass windows. Tash’s boots whipped about as the politician hung above the floor. Many among the group of ambassadors rushed forward to try to cut him down, but they were beaten back by the legionaries’ rifle butts. Chief among the would-be rescuers was a young Rodalian woman flourishing a dagger who attempted to stab the Vandians, but the armoured troops easily overpowered her, beating her savagely to the floor and laying into her until she was stretched out beaten, bleeding and still. Duncan noted that none of the king’s guardsmen – the only other force bearing firearms inside the palace – attempted to intervene. Short of a threat to the life of Weyland’s monarch himself, they had clearly been instructed to offer no resistance to their powerful visitors.
Prince Gyal indicated the desperately shaking Rodalian hanging above the courtiers, his face turning purple; the Vandian noble was oblivious to frantic shouts and yelling from the league’s diplomats. ‘There is
no
limit to the imperium’s reach or imperial law. We suffer no commands from barbarian councils. Those who offend against the emperor or the empire’s rule will find immediate execution is their only reward. The King of Weyland has offered the hand of friendship in punishing criminals sought by Vandia, brigands who are now making mischief in his land, and I as the empire’s appointed legate have accepted his cooperation. If any bordering barbarian realm believes it can gainsay the imperium’s will, step forward now. After I have improvised a gallows for your insolent necks, I shall locate your piddling satrapy on a map and burn whatever open-sewered slum masquerades as capital of your sty to ashes.’