"And what of His Grace of Hellebore? Has your duke sent you warnings of his plans? I'm told the Great Council will sit at Tern Gyre."
"He'll do as sees fit."
"He's sworn his allegiance at the high sanctuary in Eldinor." "Many oaths were sworn to old Carlomund." "Some might call that treason."
"And some might call it late!" The old knight stood and snapped his fingers for dogs and daughters both; the whole lot got to their feet. "Finish as you like. You will not stay long, I trust."
Attorfall and his kin left for the wooden stair that led to rooms on the upper floor.
"My father would have hanged that man, I think," muttered Lamoric. He seemed tired. Deorwen cast her eyes down.
"I'd hang him for this wheel of cheese." Ouen gestured to the waxy block.
Lamoric nodded toward the upstairs rooms and asked his captain, "Are we in danger, do you think?"
"Attorfall does not seem a man of action, Lordship," Coensar whispered carefully. Servants still prowled the gloom.
"And no one could have known we'd stop here," Berchard added.
"We should be on our guard," Coensar concluded. "Men at the windows. A man on the door."
"Who are the bastards?" said Ouen. "Those weren't common outlaw brigands this morning, were they Badan?"
"You'd never go for a company of knights," he admitted. "There's plenty better game on the roads. Priests. Traders."
"You heard what Moryn's man said," Lamoric replied. "He said we arranged this trap. What if it's him? Is it so hard to believe Moryn might have been behind the whole thing? What better way to hide their complicity than to point a finger at us?"
Durand did not believe it. Gol had not expected to meet him. There had been more than the Red Knight's men on that road.
"Which way will the Duke of Mornaway vote?" Durand murmured, surprised to hear his voice aloud.
Men turned.
Agryn spoke, choosing his words. "Duke Severin is a faithful vassal." Lamoric shot a sharp glance at the long-faced knight, but Agryn continued. "There is honor in his house. He would never vote to cast his king down, not if it cost him his last acre."
Agryn looked Durand full in the face, waiting. Durand swallowed as Deorwen's stare joined the others. 'That captain," he said. "The man I killed. I knew him from Yrlac. I worked for him. He was called Gol."
Some nodded, maybe having heard Gol's name or having met the man. Some were puzzled. He wondered how many now knew he had served Radomor. He wondered what Deorwen understood.
"Radomor's man?" Coensar pressed.
"He made it sound as though he was on the outs with Lord Radomor. My fault, getting away, I think. He meant the ambush as a present for Radomor somehow."
There was a lot of shifting around the table while Durand schooled his features. He dared not look to Deorwen. Finally, Ouen thrashed his head, astonished.
"But Radomor, he fought in the Marches. He led his father's host under the king's banner."
Agryn nodded. "He was gravely wounded leading the vanguard on the second day. A fine career nearly blighted."
"But
I've
had nothing to do with Radomor," protested Lamoric. "He was my brother-in-law. I don't understand."
Durand struggled. This brother-in-law had sealed his wife in a tower. In all of Durand's confessing, he had never quite said as much. Now, he had delayed too long.
But Coensar was nodding.
"Lord Moryn carries his father's proxy," he observed.
"And this was to be Gol's little gift for his erstwhile master?" Lamoric said. "I wonder. How would he have taken it? I remember once my sister's cat left an adder in her bed. Dead, though."
"Gol was a hard man," Durand said, a coward still.
"The man was a savage," Berchard amended. Agryn shot a disapproving look across the table; a wise man did not speak ill of the newly dead. Berchard finished timidly: "I saw him in Pendur."
"So he might well have gone further than anyone asked him," Lamoric reasoned. "A lord must be careful whom he takes as his liegeman."
Coensar spoke, eyeing the shadowy corners of theieasting hall. "Maybe Gol was hunting Moryn. Maybe he never meant to find two strong parties in that road. Maybe he thought he had help. We can't know. The roads beyond this hall are still thick with strangers. Lamoric, taken, might make a lever to change his father's vote. Maybe Moryn's not quite the man his forefathers were. Eat. Watch. We don't have far to go."
They finished their lean meal and bullied the stooped manservant for some old straw pallets. The women and the wounded got the good ones, though Deorwen complained. The rest—those not on watch—stretched blankets over damp straw, silverfish, and earwigs, muttering charms against vermin.
Durand lay on one shoulder, listening to the farts and grumbles of the men and to the rustle of things alive in the dank At-torfall straw.
Deorwen was breathing somewhere in the dark. He tried to put it from his mind.
He pictured Radomor boiling in that furnace hall down in Ferangore, and all the magnates riding to the Council at Tern Gyre. There were too many men too angry with Ragnal, and there were too many Cassonels stitching them together.
Durand wondered how many votes the magnates had. If the fools meant to overthrow their king, they would need to win at the Great Council, and they would need someone to stand in the king's place. But "Radomor had not answered when Cassonel asked, and he was not heir while his father lived.
But someone had died in Yrlac.
Whatever Radomor once had been, Alwen's betrayal and the nagging doom of a skald must have changed all that. He might do anything.
If you set aside Lost Hesperand and the Marches, there were thirteen duchies. Cassonel's Duke of Beoran would vote to throw the king down. Mornaway would never, and old Abravanal of Gireth would no more rebel than he would sprout wings. Cassonel had spoken of some angry heir coming to power. Durand tried to remember the duchy. Was it Cape Eame? And what of Hellebore? And the widow who held Saerdana and Germander. How would she cast her vote?
Something chose that moment to scamper across his ankles on tiny needle claws.
Durand mashed his palms over his eyes. War at the heart of the realm would sweep up ev
ery man, woman, and child in Er
rest, catching them all by their countless oaths and tearing the land to pieces. What did a king's man do when his own sworn lord declared for a usurper? What oaths did a man keep?
When Durand opened his eyes, a tiny flame stirred at the top of the stair. It winked in the first floor passage where old Warm's room was. After an instant, the light swelled. In its wobbling circle, Durand made out Warin's sour face.
But there was a stranger in that circle as well. Durand remembered the gloves.
"Durand?"
one of the watchmen asked.
In a moment, Durand had crossed to the stairs. Fumbling at first, he caught hold of the wooden steps and vaulted up.
Though they had only seen one door into Attorfall—as the hall backed on the hill—there were plenty of windows in the master's rooms on the upper story. A trapped man could escape that way.
At the far end of the high passage, a door pinched out the light. Durand charged. In a heartbeat, he was down the passage and throwing his weight against the door.
Warin spun, half-dousing his candle. Durand had seen what must be Warin's bedchamber; a cloaked shape bent in the window frame.
Huge dogs bounded for him.
"Stop!" Durand roared, but then the dogs were on him. Paws struck his chest, and muzzles fought for purchase against his jaw and should
ers. The snarls filled the castl
e. Boots thundered on the stairs.
Badan, Ouen, and
half of Lamoric's men chased the stranger until the darkness and bad roads turned them back. They found no trace.
At Attorfall, they barred the doors and sat their host at his own table, his daughters waili
ng upstairs—over the dogs, Du
rand suspected. The brutes had been stubborn.
"What is this?" Warin demanded.
Coensar leaned close, while Durand stood guard. "Attorfall, I'm afraid you told a little lie when you said you hadn't seen any guests."
Warin answered in a strained whisper.
"I don't see what business that is of—"
Durand squeezed the man's shoulder.
j
"Warin,"
prompted Coensar.
"I may've seen something. There have been men. Mostly just stopping to spend the night. Men from Beoran. Cape Erne. Heronleas. Highshields."
"And your lord?"
"I've given bloody
oaths."
Durand moved Warm's arm into a painful position.
"His Grace has warned us all," said Warin, "that there may be trouble after Tern Gyre, and he's been talking about this leech of a king we're lumbered with and how there might be better men for the Hazel Throne. Is that what you're so desperate to hear?"
"Who're these better men?" demanded Coensar. "And don't think you can play clever with me now."
"I don't know. Maybe he fancies himself for the job, I don't know."
"Right," Coensar said, and Durand let the man loose.
"Get out of my house," Warin gasped.
"You've left something out, Warin. You've had a very recent houseguest."
"One of Hellebore's men. A messenger only. He's the one told me there might be trouble after Tem Gyre. To be ready if there's a call."
"Now he's seen us here, what does he intend to do?" prompted Coensar.
"I don't know. He may plan to catch the duke up in Tern Gyre. Or warn his people there are men from Gireth on the move in his lands. Maybe they won't take it so kindly."
They set out
in the dark, taking whatever shepherd's tracks Heremund could scare up for them. When light returned, they passed scowling swineherds and poachers on forest tracks.
Knights and shield-bearers all kept their swords handy. Coensar made certain that outriders patrolled in strength and kept a rearguard trailing them in case of ambush.
Finally, they crossed Hellebore and Saerdana to reach the chalk cliffs above the Broken Crown and the harbor city of Port Stairs.
"Durand, we must
speak," Deorwen said.
For a moment, the party jostling around them was out of earshot At every turn for the last fifty leagues, she had been trying to corner him. Now, as the party packed the switch-backing streets of Port Stairs, Deorwen slipped in alongside.
"You've avoided me long enough," she said.
Durand kept his silence.
The town tumbled down a chalk cliff, heaped on the terraces that had given Port Stairs its name. The street to the quayside zigzagged like a weaver's shuttle, and, at each bend, the Port Stair burghers had thrown up a sanctuary idol: the Warders, the Champion, the Maid, the Queen.
She caught him under the twin Warders with their shields and their coats of nails as the street reversed itself for the next "stair."
"You must give me a chance to explain."
'There's no need," Durand said. He spurred his gelding into the next street, and into the crowd again.
"Damn you,"
she hissed, but the old rule bound her: Secrets could not stand the Eye of Heaven. For Durand, the press of the crowd meant safety though he could feel her eyes on his back as riders moved between them.
He drew a deep breath of sea air. Port Stairs was a strange place. Shops and houses crowded so close on every side that, even though the town was one street deep, a man could only catch the glint of the waves in quick alley glimpses.
Another sanctuary idol hove near: the Maid, free and tall, almost as though she could see the waves. The baggage train balled up around her skirts.
"Durand, we have to speak. It does us no good to pretend," Deorwen said. But this was not the time, and a time would never come. He must be like the tooth-puller and snatch the rotten thing out with one twist. It would be a mercy to them both.
"For God's sake," she said, but Durand spurred his horse into the next street once again. This time he wound up knee to knee with Lamoric at the head of their crowd.
Just then, Berchard rode up from the quay to the head of their column.