The Dread Wyrm (Traitor Son Cycle) (59 page)

“I need you to prepare the sortie. Your father’s down for a day or two.” Ghause spoke with absolute command. She didn’t need the men trying to take control now. Even as she spoke, Thorn—or his dark master—tried her defences.

And what was happening at Harndon?

Aneas—ever the dutiful son—gave a tired salute. “Mother—”

“Yes, my plum?” she asked.

“Is anyone coming to rescue us? Where are Gavin and Gabriel?” He met her eye. “Mother—we can have the best hermetical defences in the known world and the highest walls, but we’re already running out of
men.
”

“You’re not spreading this poison, my plum?” she asked lightly.

Aneas gave her a lopsided grin—a grin that his brothers also had. “I am the soul of cheerful confidence,” he said. “Is anyone coming?”

She nodded. “Ser John Crayford is bringing the northern army,” she said.

Aneas paused a moment. Then he collected his gauntlets. “You’re lying, Mother,” he said quietly.

He had never contradicted her before.

She shrugged. “We’ll hold,” she said.

Aneas pursed his lips and nodded. “Have you given thought to escape?” he asked. “The man who claims to be Kevin Orley has promised us all some spectacular tortures and humiliations.”

“The Orleys were never worth a tinker’s curse,” she said, snapping her fingers. “And if I leave this rock, it will fall. You know that.”

He frowned. “We have a bolt hole,” he reminded her.

“I won’t be captured,” she said. “But I’m not going anywhere. Hold the walls, my last son. I’ll hold the sorcerer.”

And when Aneas was gone back to his men, she all but flew up the steps to her solar. She gazed into the ball—

Waved her hand, moving the scene this way and that, her whole intent concentrated on the crystal artifact.

“Mary Magdelene,” Ghause swore. “He’s dead!”

For too long—time she could not spare—she watched the catastrophe play out in the south. She had no idea how the tournament had played out, but the King—her brother—was dead, his corpse wrapped in linen. She was bonded with her brother in a very special way, and she found him easily, even in death. She watched the corpse, and the Galles and the Albans gather around it like the flies.

The new archbishop was giving a speech. Over her brother’s corpse.

She bit her lip.

“Henri and you, in one day?” she asked the crystal. “Goodbye,
brother.
”

Then she moved her hand and sent the scene spinning northward. After an agonized minute of scrolling she faced her fears. She unlaced the side of her kirtle with hurried fingers, and pulled both it and her shift over her head.

Naked, she summoned her power, and cast.

Thorn was in the midst of a complex summoning to support the siege—the parsing of two energies to augment a trebuchet. Covered by a nasty, rainy spring night, Ser Hartmut was moving his machines forward.

But an alarm went off, and he dropped all the summoned power, so suddenly a trebuchet arm suddenly whipped back, killing two sailors.

Thorn cared not, and in the twinkling of an insect’s multifaceted eye, he was
gone.

Instantly, Ghause had Gabriel in the stone. The summoning did her bidding. It was dangerous, given Thorn’s proximity, but she had to know.

He was alive. Wounded—and tired.

There was his little nun. Such a useless lover, that boy—he still hadn’t straddled the little twig, although she pined for it and Ghause had tried to put a geas on her.

And the nun and a tall blonde woman were supporting…

The so-called Queen.

Ghause spat.

“I didn’t want to have to do this,” she said to God and anyone else listening. “But—an eye for an eye.”

In the fastness of her palace, she looked at the great working she’d designed and built for months.

Desiderata was one of the best defended entities that Ghause had ever worked against. She’d watched the Queen struggle directly with Thorn’s dark master. She knew the woman’s calibre now.

She knew a moment’s pity. If she knew how to kill the babe without killing the mother, she’d have done it. She honoured any woman as strong as Desiderata. And she knew Desiderata to be a true daughter of Tar.

As Ghause was herself.

Just for the space of a few heartbeats, Ghause considered relinquishing her revenge. Her brother was dead.

But when she killed the babe, her son by her brother would be King. She didn’t pause to consider the obstacles, because she herself had never let obstacles like bastardy and incest stop her from anything.

And besides—a small, ignoble portion of her just wanted to see if her great working was capable. Capable of breaching all that the dark master himself had failed to breach.

She stared into the crystal, reached through—

The moon had not risen a finger’s breadth before they rode into the yard of the great stone barn that towered like a cathedral of farming—wood and stone sixty feet high and a hundred feet long.

Lord Corcy dismounted. Two young men ran out of the barn with spears—and halted, as the whole
casa
drew weapons.

“They’re mine,” he said. “Haver—put that spear down and tell your brother to do the same before these gentlemen mistrust us all.” He turned to Gabriel. “My barn watch. Let me show you around.”

Blanche pressed up close on her horse—his horse, in fact. “We need linen and hot water,” she said. “Please,” she added.

Lord Corcy nodded. “There’s an office with a bed. And a fireplace.” He pointed. To the two young men, he said, “Torches and lights. These folk need to be put up inside.” He turned back to Gabriel. “Sometimes we have militia musters here—I’ve bedding for fifty.”

“No more servants,” Gabriel said. “I’m sorry, my lord, but I can’t let you send to your castle.”

“There won’t be much for linens here,” Corcy said.

Gabriel snapped his fingers and pointed and Toby appeared. “Clean linen. Get every clean shirt in the
casa
if you must.”

Toby bowed and vanished like a conjuror’s trick.

“You are well served, my lord,” Corcy said.

“We’ve been through a fair amount.” Gabriel bowed and followed Blanche. He got an arm under the Queen’s shoulder and together with the strong blonde woman they got the Queen up the ramp of the barn and onto the threshing floor, and then through a big door to the right. There was a small panelled room.

Lord Corcy displaced Blanche and helped carry the Queen, whose legs suddenly stopped working altogether.

“Bed,” Corcy said. He pointed with his chin. Up against the end stalls, where two very curious donkeys enjoyed the warmth of the barn’s one warm room, there was a bed.

Blanche got the Queen’s feet. Amicia had one of her hands and was singing a prayer.

Blanche’s eyes met Gabriel’s for a moment. “A stable?” she asked.

“There wasn’t any room at the inn,” Gabriel snapped.

Amicia’s eye met his in intense disapproval, but Blanche laughed.

“You’re a card,” she said. “My lord.”

Ghause felt the birth pangs as if they were her own.

If the babe was born, her spell was lost. In the
aethereal
, mother and child were one bond until birth. The
aethereal
cared nothing for nature and everything for association. Separate was separate. Together was the bond.

Outside, thunder rolled. The heavens protested her decision—lightning flashed, and she regretted nothing.

“Brother,” she called. “I will make it as if you
had never been.
”

Thorn materialized hard by Ser Hartmut. They were so close to Ticondaga’s walls that the run-off of the rain falling on the castle’s roofs hundreds of feet above them fell on their heads.

Hartmut was leading his own mining team. He never seemed to tire, or relent.

He started—the only sign of surprise Thorn had ever seen—and half drew the hermetical artifact he called a sword. Thorn had learned by his arts that it was much more than a sword. It was more like a gate.

“You would do well not to surprise me,” Ser Hartmut growled.

Kevin Orley flipped his visor open.

Thorn ignored him. “It is now. Prepare the assault.”

Hartmut glared. “Now? In darkness, in the rain?” He was not afraid of Thorn, and he shrugged. “Eight days of your empty promises and our blood—”

“Rain will not stop us,” Thorn said.

“Soldiers like to be warm and to eat,” Hartmut said. “Mastery of this simple concept has won many battles, and forgetting it lost more.”

Thorn simply turned. “Now,” he said.

Ser Hartmut growled. Then he turned and, loaded with armour as he was, began to run back from the exposed post to which he’d crawled, towards his camp, where despite the rain, fires flickered.

Gabriel watched Amicia comfort the Queen. Most of her grave dignity was gone with the birth pangs—her face was furrowed in pain.

Blanche smiled at him. “Best be gone, my lord. Men have no stomach for this sort o’ thing, being the weaker sex, as it were.”

Gabriel had to return her smile—mostly because she had humour, and that was what he needed, just then.

“You might find out where yer squire has got to with all the linens,” she added.

Lord Corcy himself was heating water in the fireplace. But before Gabriel could even pretend to be useful, Toby entered with an armload of linen sheets, shifts, and shirts. Nell came in behind him with a pair of pretty satin pillows, a woman’s gown in brown velvet, and a nested set of copper kettles.

“Which,” Nell said, with a curtsey to all present, “Ser Christopher says as he happens to have this gown and these pillows—”

“Only Foliak goes on campaign with a dress to put on his conquests,” Gavin said from the huge doorway.

Blanche put her hands on her hips. “Men—out.”

Ser Michael came in with more linen. “Sorry, lass. That’s not some friend of your ma’s having a baby. That’s the rightful Queen of Alba. If I could, I’d pack every peer of the realm into the room.”

Gabriel nodded at Michael. “I’d forgotten that,” he said.

“Somewhere, Kaitlin isn’t far from giving birth,” Michael said. “Mayhap I’ve just given it all more thought.”

“Christ and all the saints,” swore Blanche. “The poor Queen!”

Amicia turned—with more venom than Gabriel had ever seen. Amicia looked
old.
She had lines on her face that she’d never had, and even the torchlight was unkind. Gabriel, who had two bad cuts on his head, a blinding headache and a left hand so sore as to penetrate all that, assumed he looked as bad.

He turned to Toby. “Get my harness off,” he said. “I don’t think we’ll be attacked while the Queen gives birth. And I’m about to drop.”

As if on cue, Bad Tom appeared at the far door, by the donkeys. He had a long sword in his hand.

“Barn’s all ours,” he said. He nodded to Lord Corcy.

Corcy had been replaced at the water kettle by Nell, and he stood with a hand to the small of his back. “Weren’t you for killing us all, an hour back?”

Tom Lachlan laughed. “Nothing personal,” he said. “Better this way.”

Corcy nodded.

It was a big room, a third of the barn, and the squires and pages moved in among the knights, disarming them. The metal falling on the stone floor made a racket.

“Quiet!” demanded Amicia. “Can you so-called gentlemen not manage to let this poor woman have a little peace?”

The squires began to move about more quietly. Somehow, the scrape of metal on the floor seemed even louder.

The Queen screamed.

Ghause stood in her citadel, amidst the dark trees and the bright cascade of flowers.

The whole vastness of her working was all one brilliant plant with deep roots and a carefully cultivated single yellow rose that was as big and lush a blossom as the real had ever seen. It was perhaps more perfect for never having known real weather or real bees.

Ghause did not pray, as she did not think it fitting to pray when she was about to kill. But she did reach out to her lady.

“You promised me revenge,” she reminded her patron.

And she thought—I hope Thorn is watching. Perhaps he’ll slink home.

One slim hand reached out, and plucked the rose.

The world screamed.

Thorn could not smile in triumph, but the triumph was there. “I knew she would have to do it,” he said to the rain and the darkness.

But Ash was elsewhere.

Thorn raised his own net of cobweb and deceit and false guidance—camouflage and deception such as nature practised on herself—as long prepared as her working. Into her magnificent black cathedral of a curse he launched his own working so that it nested inside, like the resident mice and bats and moths in a castle.

“Goodbye, Ghause,” he said.

At the Queen’s scream, Amicia stood.

Gabriel suddenly understood that this was not a matter of the birth.

Blanche caught the Queen’s hand.

Gabriel stepped
straight into his palace. There, Prudentia stood on her plinth. She frowned.

“It’s your mother,” she said. “Oh, Gabriel—”

Gabriel pushed open the door to the
aethereal
. He loosed workings that he kept ready, a careful barrage—his own shield first, as he had learned from bitter experience, and then his glittering tapestry working.

He spat names at his statues and his signs as his room whirled about him.

In the real, his heart had beaten once.

Then, having done what he could, he stepped to the door.

Prudentia moved to stop him
. “
Master,” she cried. “This is death, come for the Queen, from your mother.”

Gabriel nodded. “I’ve made all my decisions,” he said.

“I’m no fan of your mother, boy. She killed me. But this—you would give your life to baulk her?”

Gabriel set his jaw in a way that those who knew him often dreaded. “Yes.”

Prudentia stepped out of the way. “Goodbye.”

“I’ll be back, Pru,” he said. Then he stepped out of his palace.