He touched the Green Lady's veil. If Deorwen had not saved him, the bit of green would have been another knot on old Duke Eorcan's lance.
He remembered.
Into the silence, Durand roared "No!"
He held the green knot in his fist. The voices were still. Even Radomor himself looked.
A dappled light shimmered through the arrow loops: a light full of beech trees and late summer evenings. Already, he could smell it in the air: the candle wax scent of Bower Mead.
He heard footfalls on the stair.
"What?" growled Radomor. The Rooks stared like carved monsters.
"One vote " stumbled Durand. "One vote is not cast."
Every eye abandoned Durand for the stairway, where a light swelled, and the ghostly warriors of Bower Mead had already made their way to the top of the stair—a twin file of dead men, silver-pale and young. How long had they been marching? When had they set out? In their wake came the Lady of the Bower, alive and glowing as though moonlight touched her flesh. The Lost knights bore her upon a palanquin.
She looked to Durand. He saw the clouded expression of someone struggling to recall a dream.
"The Lady," Durand whispered. "The Lady of Hesperand. She has come."
She passed through the silent hall, borne above the fighting men. As Radomor and Ragnal and every member of the Great Council stared, her bearers mounted the dais to set the palanquin on the tile before the king and his enemy. Both men had the hunched look of animals caught between snapping and fleeing for the trees.
"King of Errest," she said, looking up to Ragnal.
"I am," said the king, warily.
"I am the Lady of Hesperand. I bear a writ under the duke's seal, Great King, and I will speak his will." She produced a parchment under a clot of dark wax.
Ragnal glanced to his arbiter, and the prelate took the parchment, nodding. Hesperand had always had a seat at the Great Council.
Durand held his knot of veil and spoke. "You must cast your vote, my lady. You must cast your vote." "Ask your question, my king," said the Lady. Ragnal slowly nodded.
"There is a debt owing," he said. "I have petitioned this council that it be forgiven. You must answer, 'yea' or 'nay,' madam. How says
...
Hesperand?"
"Hesperand answers 'yea,' Majesty," said the Lady. Her eyes met Durand's then, down the length of the feasting hall, but she hardly faltered. "The debt should be forgiven."
No one heard the verdict, then. Knights and lords from every corner of Errest leapt to their feet—outrage and triumph both ringing from the vaults. Durand felt a hard grin spread across his face. The whoresons hadn't expected this. Radomor lurched away from the king, clutching at his blade, but wise enough to see he could not live a heartbeat if he struck out with the Septarim and Bower knights all around. Beoran caught up with Radomor, still on the dais, catching hold of his arm, ducking like a peasant and babbling apologies or reassurance. Very nearly, Radomor swept the man's head from his shoulders. A good foot of steel had left its scabbard before the enraged duke mastered himself enough to let the sword go and storm from the hall. Rooks and Champion and green knights all followed after.
In the next few moments, fully a third of the room emptied into the courtyard.
Friends clapped each other on the shoulders in rough jubilation, but Durand left them to it. He crossed to the dais where the Bower knights had lifted the palanquin once more.
He approached like a sickroom visitor. The Lady looked at him, clouds of confusion—of suspicion—drifting in the world beyond her eyes. He had the green veil in his fist
"Ladyship, you left this with me," he said.
The Lost woman's lips parted a coin's width. She reached out her hand to touch and then to take the stiff and twisted bit of linen from his fingers.
The Bower knights were already turning. Some looked at him, almost accusing. He could see the wounds that had felled them, dark mouths and sockets cold and empty now. Remorselessly, they shouldered their burden and turned toward the stair. Their care of this woman was more than half a jailor's concern for his prisoner. She had been their deaths.
He looked away before he could find Cerlac's face.
"Thank you,"
said the Bower Lady.
He risked a glance, and saw her eyes, first looking at him, and then through him. The knights had begun their pallbearer's march. Though he could easily have stretched out his hand, Durand could see that they were already gone, the old circle closing around them. But she had followed her token from Hesperand, and perhaps this one new thing could start the old wheel wobbling. He hoped it might
30. Peace in Moonligh
t
D
urand limped outside where the waning Blood Moon rode high and bright above Creation. He and Tern Gyre had both had a rough time. The round watchtower above the Broken Crown had fallen, dropping Coensar's postern door to the waves. The wall was open to the wind. He saw serving men on the run nearby. A corner tower of Biedin's keep looked like a half-felled tree, and, when they scrambled to brace it, Durand joined them. They set to work ramming timbers tight between the wall and the living stone, and soon Durand and the castle men had a dozen sturdy beams meant for the prince's ceilings propping the tower.
As they caught their breath—and listened for the beams to crack—Durand found Heremund tottering around the corner.
The little man stared. "Does anyone inside know they're falling into the sea?"
"I should have been a carpenter," said Durand.
Heremund shook his head. "Some of this will have stood since Willan's Lost Princes." The sea shimmered beyond the gulfs like beaten foil.
"Come Durand," said Heremund. "You'll be making these fellows antsy." He winked, and Durand followed Heremund into the battered courtyard.
"You'd been gone some time," Heremund said, giving Durand a close look.
"I'm fine. Couldn't stand that hall another hour."
"You and the king. He's packed up that train of his and started the march south already. Prince Biedin had his own chambers set aside."
"The vote was finished."
Again, the little man gave Durand a close look.
Durand only smiled. "Worry over someone else, Heremund."
"You looked half mad in there, Durand. I don't want to see you summoning up green ghosts again for a few days, eh?"
Durand glanced toward the castle gate and the bridge beyond where royal and rebel had fled. "I'm going to get a little more air."
Heremund nodded, and Durand crossed the high bridge back to the camp. Animals grazed among the flattened tents. He passed the place of Waer's long fall. The low hump of Agryn's unhallowed burial lay dark in the grass. He found his tent where it sprawled over the trunks inside.
He got to work untangling his belongings.
But a sharp sound stopped him: south, toward the mainland, and too near for the treasonous lords riding home.
Tock.
He heard the swing and rap of a staff's heel on cobbles, and he froze, listening.
But then there was laughter. People from the castle back on the bridge. Berchard and Ouen traipsed over the high span.
"We squeezed it out of old Heremund," said Berchard. "You can't hide from us. Ouen picked the man right up off the ground." There was a flash of gold teeth.
"I've wanted to do that," Durand said.
Smiling, Berchard peered south. 'These kings are shifty beasts. After tonight, His Majesty will be wanting to give you ten
castle
s in Beoran. We'll have to catch him."
Ouen slapped his shoulder. "You'll be rich as a Mankyr merchant He's bound to have a strongbox or two left somewhere."
Ouen took Durand's arm. "Now, though, His Highness, Prince Biedin, he'd put up some fine Vuranna claret to serve his royal brother. Now it'll only go to waste."
Berchard took an arm as well. "You'll taste the warm Eye of Heaven and the fragrant breezes of the Inner Seas."
"Under my own power, I think," said Durand.
The two nodded, and, once they were sure Durand was following, let him free.
"Maybe we can get Agyrn buried properly," Durand said.
"Aye," said Berchard. "Even a Patriarch wouldn't say that was anything but war."
Durand nodded and looked up from the turned earth to see Deorwen picked out against the castle gates by moonlight
For an instant, she stood alone on the bridge. But Ouen and Berchard were already bowing to her, each with an eye on Durand as they did so. Coensar and Lamoric walked from the gates.
Coensar's eye glinted. Lamoric beamed, taking his wife by the shoulder. Her expression was unreadable: a mask donned in haste.
"Come," Lamoric said. And they were all walking in.
Under the gate, however, Durand glanced back. This time he heard the staff click, clear but distant, as if the Traveler were moving off.