The Copper Promise (52 page)

Frith raised his head. His grey eyes were as cool as distant clouds. ‘I suspected you would follow me.’

Wydrin laughed, although there was an uneasy note to her voice.

‘We don’t have a lot of choice, do we, princeling? You’re the key to getting rid of this dragon.’ Frith didn’t answer. ‘Thanks, by the way, for leaving us in Verneh with a big sack of mystical eggshells, and, by the way, the bar bill.’

‘You knew where I was going,’ said Frith. His words were short, clipped at the ends.

‘Well, yeah, but that’s not really the point.’ Wydrin crossed her arms over her chest.

‘We still need you to figure out the spell,’ Sebastian broke in. ‘Y’Ruen will be in Ynnsmouth by now, and I dread to think of the damage she will be causing. We must stop her.’

Frith looked away from them, as though they talked of nothing more than a spot of bad weather, or the year’s harvests.

‘There is much to be done,’ he said eventually, gesturing at the hall with its freshly scrubbed flagstones. ‘Although word of his death is spreading, some of Fane’s men are still in the Blackwood. They are melting into the night, making their way to Istria or elsewhere. I’ve sent messengers to all the settlements, letting them know there is a Frith on the Blackwood throne once more.’ His right hand gripped the armrest so tightly for a moment that his knuckles turned white. ‘There is still much to do.’

‘Are you even listening?’ Wydrin took a few angry steps forward.

Frith stood, not meeting her gaze.

‘I’ve had rooms prepared for you both,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you will want to rest.’ He stepped down from the dais and left the room through a curtained doorway to the right of the throne.

Wydrin turned to Sebastian, her eyebrows disappearing into the thatch of her fringe. ‘What do you suppose that was all about?’

‘I’m not certain,’ said Sebastian. ‘But I think we might be in trouble.’

When Wydrin woke the next day it took her some time to remember where she was. She looked up at the billowing white sheets covering the top of the four-poster bed and felt silks under her skin.

What have I been up to, to end up in such a fancy bed?

It did not take long for it to all come back. Fane’s shredded body hanging from the castle walls, Frith’s head bowed, not looking at them. As Sebastian had said: trouble.

Picking up her clothes from where she’d dropped them the night before, Wydrin looked out the window to the courtyard below. It was a bright day, with great chunks of cloud like torn bread dotting the sky, and, judging by where the sun was, she’d been asleep for longer than she’d intended. Swearing under her breath and hopping to get into her trousers, she left the room and found herself at the top of a set of spiral stairs, which she followed down and down until she found a small yard, lazy with captured heat.

From there she wandered, padding quietly through the castle and the grounds, taking note of the people running back and forth with supplies and tools. It was an empty place, sombre grey walls rising on all sides, and they were rushing to fill it. She supposed that was a good thing, but what of Frith? What would fill him now that his vengeance was satisfied?

Eventually she found him at the top of the tallest tower.

‘I don’t know how you can live in a place like this,’ she said, leaning on the doorframe. ‘Don’t you get lost all the time?’

Frith looked up. He was sitting in a room full of empty bookcases, at a table that looked as though it had been borrowed from somewhere less regal. The small desk was covered in papers, and there was a pile of sacks and boxes stacked under the window.

‘You get used to it,’ he said, turning back to the pages in front of him.

Wydrin came into the room cautiously, keeping her eyes on the young lord. ‘I like it though,’ she said, running a hand over the wall. ‘All this space, great views. I bet you’ve had some wild times here.’ As soon as the words were out she regretted them, but Frith didn’t appear to notice.

‘This was my father’s study,’ he said. ‘He would sit in here at all hours, with just a couple of lamps lit …’ His voice trailed off.

There was a cough, and Sebastian appeared at the door. Wydrin found she was almost glad to see him, although he’d certainly looked better; his eyes were shadowed, and the scab on his cheek was livid.

‘You found your way here, then,’ she said, injecting as much cheer into her voice as was humanly possible. ‘As I was just telling the princeling, I practically had to interrogate a girl with cabbages to find my way—’

‘Have you looked at O’rin’s spell again yet?’ said Sebastian. He came over and stood in front of Frith’s desk, casting a shadow over the papers. ‘We don’t have much time.’

Frith looked up at him. There was some of the old anger in his eyes. ‘You are standing in my light.’

‘What is it you’re doing, anyway?’ asked Wydrin. She poked hopefully at the bags by the wall, looking for anything bottle-shaped. ‘What is all this stuff?’

‘I am taking stock of what little Fane left behind.’

Wydrin spotted something black and blood-stained in the corner of one of the crates, so she fished it out. Fane’s helm was even heavier than she had imagined, and it still smelled slightly of burned flesh.

‘This has got to be valuable,’ she said, holding it up to the light so that she could see the delicate runes engraved into the surface. She glanced at Sebastian, and noticed two things at once: first, that Sebastian looked afraid, and second, that the exotic shapes engraved in the helm matched those of the armour Sebastian wore.

‘Where did you say you got that breastplate again, Seb?’

Sebastian said nothing.

‘Because it looks an awful lot like this helm. Like it might be part of a matching set.’

‘It is the same,’ agreed Frith, looking from the helm to the breastplate. ‘And the same as the gauntlets the Children of the Fog wore.’

‘Sebastian,’ said Wydrin, trying to keep her voice level. ‘What have you done?’

‘It was the only way I could survive,’ he said hurriedly. There was sweat on his brow. ‘The attack from Y’Ruen, you didn’t see it. How else could I live through that? I was trying to save them.’

‘The armour protects you?’

‘Bezcavar protects me,’ he said, too quickly. ‘My sword is sworn to him, and in return I was unstoppable. They were dying in their hundreds. You weren’t there!’

‘You have become like Fane,’ said Frith, an expression of enormous distaste on his face. ‘The lackey of a demon.’

‘I have not!’ Suddenly Sebastian was shouting. There were dots of colour high on his cheeks, very red against his pale skin. ‘I did what needed to be done!’

‘And what of your gods, Sebastian?’ Wydrin threw the helm back into the crate with a crash. ‘Wasn’t your sword sworn to Isu? Does that mean nothing?’

‘What do you care?’ spat Sebastian, his face twisted into an expression of such bitterness Wydrin found herself taking a step away from him. ‘You’ve never given the slightest thought to the gods.’

‘
You
cared, that was the point!’ she cried. ‘All those years following the code of your stupid knights despite what they did to you, praying to your stupid mountain gods. You are better than this! Better than a demon that demands pain and blood for his favours.’

Words ran out, and there was silence between them all. Wydrin found that she was breathing hard, as though she’d just run up the stairs.

‘Maybe I’m tired of being the good one,’ said Sebastian eventually.

All at once, she couldn’t bear to be in the same room as him. She stormed out, taking care to kick the door on the way, and she fled down the stairs, and out of the gates.

Wydrin marched until she reached the treeline and there she paused to catch her breath. The air under the trees was still and cool, and full of the rich green smell of the forest. She breathed in deeply, closing her eyes. It would be all right, she told herself. Seb might have made a stupid decision, but it was nothing that couldn’t be undone. She would find this demon herself if she had to, and force it to take the oath back. It might be a demon, but she was bloody annoyed and—

There was a snapping of twigs behind her, which was all the warning she got before something heavy connected with the back of her head and the forest exploded in a sea of black stars.

Frith moved restlessly from room to room, peering into corners, running his hands over the bare stones of poorly lit passages. He tried to remember how they’d looked before, when the place had been full of people and life; the library heavy with books, his mother’s room quiet with memories and the ghost of perfume. Now and then he caught himself looking for things that were no longer there, like the painting of a ship that had hung in Leon’s room, or the rows of steel pans that hung from the kitchen ceiling. None of these items were worth very much – from what he remembered, his brother’s painting had been a cheap thing picked up in a local market – but they were all gone, just the same. Everything his family had ever chosen, or made, or touched, had been carted off and sold, or thrown outside to be burned like leaves in the autumn. Fane had kept a few of their things to make the castle habitable, but those items that made the place feel like a home were long gone.

He paused in his brother Tristan’s room. It was as bare as all the others, with just the wooden bed frame remaining. He bent to look at the back of one of the struts where he and Leon and Tristan had carved their names once. It had been a fancy of Leon’s that they should mark every room in the castle with a secret sign that only they would know. At the time it had seemed faintly ridiculous to Frith. After all, wasn’t the entire castle a tribute to the Frith family name? Every stone, every room, every tower was indelibly marked with their being. Like most of Leon’s enthusiasms the idea hadn’t lasted more than a few hours, and Frith found himself regretting that. With everything so empty, was this still their home?

‘I have taken the castle back,’ he said aloud to the empty room. ‘I killed him, Father, the man who did this to us.’

There was only the answering silence. Dead, they were all dead. All of his enemies, and all of his family. What now, then?

Eric appeared at the door, his feet not quite daring to step over the threshold.

‘My Lord, the new smith has arrived from Barkhome. He asks if you have any specific instructions.’

‘Instructions?’

‘Well, my lord, there’s a lot to repair, a great many things to replace, and he wondered if there was anything you wanted done first?’

A great many things to replace
. For a moment Frith felt dizzy, as though he stood on the precipice of a cliff with only a looming darkness below him. The darkness, so long ignored, was calling to him to jump. He staggered back a step, his leg throbbing with remembered pain.

‘I don’t care,’ he said, his voice harsher than he’d intended. ‘Do whatever you think best. And do not disturb me.’

Later, he found himself back in the Great Hall. The floors had been scrubbed, the fireplaces cleaned, and someone had even thought to replace the ragged banner behind the throne. It was a little makeshift, and Frith suspected someone had put it together in a hurry in the last couple of days, but it was bright and clean and full of hope. He turned away from it to see Sebastian striding across the hall towards him. The knight didn’t look any better for his brief stay at the castle. His long black hair was unkempt, despite his attempts to tie it back, and although he’d trimmed his beard it did little to distract from his gaunt face.

‘Wydrin is missing,’ he said shortly.

Frith sat in his father’s chair, glad to get the weight off his leg for a moment.

‘I suspect it’s more likely that she is simply not speaking to you. Bezcavar was responsible for a lot of suffering in Pinehold. A lot of suffering in this very hall.’ He remembered the cauldron of blood. ‘I’m surprised you have forgotten this so soon.’

Sebastian shook his head. He still wore the breastplate and the greaves, and the demon-sworn sword was still slung across his back.

‘Wydrin would have cooled off enough to come and start another fight with me by now. No one’s seen her since she stormed out.’

‘Have you checked the kitchens? I expect she’s already drinking me out of wine.’

‘She’s not there.’ The big knight’s eyes were wide and bloodshot. ‘I have looked everywhere. I spoke to the guards on your gate and they saw her walk to the edge of the forest, and she hasn’t returned.’

‘That’s your answer, then,’ said Frith. He shifted in the chair, uncomfortable. He’d hoped to talk to her before she left, he’d wanted – well, he wasn’t sure exactly what he’d wanted, but it wasn’t this. ‘She’s had enough of the pair of us, no doubt.’

‘There was blood.’ Sebastian stepped up to the throne, lowering his voice. ‘I went out to where they said she went, and … since I swore my sword, it’s almost like I can smell it. As a dog does.’ He took a slow, steadying breath. ‘There was fresh blood on the grass. If it was hers, then she may have been badly injured.’

Frith flexed his fingers. There was a tightening in his chest, although whether it was the Edenier or something else he wasn’t sure. ‘Are you certain?’

Sebastian’s face was grim. ‘I need you to find her as you found Fane. Can you do that?’

Frith stood. Since he’d returned to the castle he’d removed all the linen strips from his hands, and placed the ink and the brushes in his father’s study. It had felt like lifting a great weight from his shoulders.

‘Come with me.’

The first thing Wydrin was aware of was the smell. Sour and rich and slightly sickly, it was the stench of old meat and strange chemicals left in jars too long. It coated her throat and made her cough, which in turn forced her to open her eyes. There was a skeleton hanging just above her, its bones yellow with age and its arms stretched out to either side as if to embrace her.

She jerked up, but there were cords digging into her arms and legs, and a thunderous pain in the back of her head that made everything go dim for a moment. She slumped back, taking deep breaths and trying not to choke on the smell.

‘What …?’