The Fall of the Dagger (The Forsaken Lands) (24 page)

Dare she hope?

I will not let anyone harm him. Ever.

Fritillary did not wait for her to answer. “True, he is not Regal Vilmar’s heir. He has no
legal
right to inherit the Basalt Throne.”

“
I
am royal,” she snapped. “Karel comes of a royal line. The House of Betany is as ancient as the Vollendorns!”

The woman raised both eyebrows, then leaned back in her chair. “Listen to me carefully, Your Grace. I don’t really care if Prince-regal Karel comes from a royal line. I don’t particularly care if he comes from the Vollendorn family, or from a long line of Sprot butchers or Rog
sprat-catchers. The Vollendorns are one of the most horrible murderous regimes the hemisphere has ever seen. We are all well rid of them.”

“What – what are you trying to say?”

“The only thing that really counts is the suppression of any sorcerous elements in Prince-regal Karel. Saker appears to think this is possible with Va-forsaken witchery. So, we watch him like a hawk as he grows up. We educate him to be a fine upright young man who will inherit the Basalt Throne when reaching his majority. If we can do that, you can continue to be his Regent in the meantime. I would prefer that solution. The alternative could be unrest and a civil war erupting between rival families, a mass of warring estates fighting like dogs over a bone, because there wouldn’t be a clear line of inheritance. And you would be the first casualty.”

Fritillary stared at her, a hard implacable gaze.

Fob it, she’s a woman who’s been just as powerful as any monarch. Don’t underestimate her.
She chose her words carefully. “Very well. But all three of you – you, Saker and Sorrel – will hold a secret that could cause great upheaval if it was ever known. It is also a secret that begs for blackmail. So I will say this, just the once, to you. I will
not
be blackmailed. There is nothing more important to me than to see my son on the Basalt Throne. If needs be, I will destroy you all to achieve that end. Do not thwart me, Fritillary Reedling. Because there would be a price, not one you would want to pay.”

The confounded woman’s expression did not change. “I’ll remember that. But you should also remember that Saker, Sorrel and I hold the only hope that Prince-regal Karel possesses to be a man not tainted and twisted by sorcery. Destroy us, you also destroy him and possibly Lowmeer as well, because he will be another Valerian Fox.”

Mathilda stood up abruptly. “This conversation is at an end. You may go.”

However, when Fritillary was already at the door, Mathilda halted her. “Sir Herelt Deremer – that day you were both here, did he know who you were?”

“We’ve known each other for thirty years,” Fritillary said.

“I loathe being made a fool of,” she said. “You’ll pay for that. Both of you.”

Fritillary Reedling emerged on to the street in front of Ustgrind Castle and halted a moment to relax the tension in her muscles. Va-damn, but that uppercrust hellion was going to give them all problems in the future!

She sighed as she crossed the market square. Her assertions to Mathilda had been emphatic, but she was not certain of their truth. She had exaggerated Saker’s confidence that he and Sorrel possessed the means to halt the development of sorcery within the twins. Only time would tell. The thought of being dependent on Va-forsaken magic made her shudder anyway. Was it to be trusted? She had no idea. Would it last? She had no idea of that either. Too many questions, too few answers.

Barden was waiting for her on the corner of the marketplace when she emerged from the castle. “You look as if you have been hit by a charging bull.”

“A good analogy,” she said, “although the bull is actually a rampaging cow with very sharp horns and a mother’s rage to protect her calf. However, I’ve done my best and now we have work to do. We’re returning to Vavala, Barden. This is where we begin our real war.”

S
aker leaped to his feet.

The transition from eagle’s brain into his own body and mind was shockingly abrupt, roiling his stomach and jerking his heart into an erratic pounding.

He snatched up the crossbow and quarrels he’d brought from the ship, yelling at Juster and Prince Ryce, “Attack now!”

“What was the explosion?” Ryce asked. They were all on their feet and fully armed, ready to advance.

“Gunpowder kegs, near the bridge. Sorrel’s there, hurt.”

He didn’t wait for a response, but as he turned and ran he heard Juster shouting, “Don’t blow up any more gunpowder! We need it!” And then, “You, sailors, get after him. Go on, run!”

The bird’s-eye view of the shortest route to where he’d seen Sorrel was impressed into his memory. A mile, he estimated. He hurled himself at the terrain, taking a straight line by leaping rocks and tearing through bushes. It had been only seconds to fly back; now he was returning on foot. His last glimpse of Sorrel, still unmoving, told him to expect the worst. When he spared a glance behind him, it was to see the two tars given the task of following him falling farther and farther behind. He was vaguely aware of gunfire echoing and the battle cries of attackers hell-bent on slaughtering the Grey Lancers.

When he hurtled across the rise overlooking the bridge and the burning encampment, Sorrel was still where he’d last seen her, unmoving. A Grey Lancer, skin and clothes black with ash, was bending over her, trying to prise the dagger from her hand.

As his gaze swept the scene, Saker readied the crossbow by touch. He had practised with the weapon for months on board ship, and
Juster’s ire if a bolt hit the ship’s woodwork encouraged good marksmanship.

No one was looking his way. He shot the bolt and the man slumped sideways, dying silently without fuss. Saker crouched for a moment, looking for any immediate danger. Nothing.

Most of the men who’d survived the initial explosion had fled or were still fleeing. When he realised why, his puzzlement changed to horror. The overturned wagon was burning fiercely. Further away there was a crater where the earlier detonation had taken place, but there were several more kegs, still unopened, some of them surrounded by flames, staves already charring. If one keg exploded, the flash and concussion would set fire to the others.

He was far enough away to have a possibility of surviving. Sorrel, if she was still alive, was certainly doomed. He sped across the intervening scrub as he’d never run before. As he raced, he dropped the crossbow and fumbled at the bambu segment he wore on a leather thong around his neck. By the time he reached Sorrel, he’d unstoppered it and grasped the remaining feather segment inside.

With a clarity born of terror, he knew he had no chance of carrying her away in time. Instead, he flung himself over her body, curling his fingers around the feather fragment with one hand and grasping the dagger blade in the other. He thought of being cold and wet and safe. He whispered in her ear, “Live, Sorrel, live.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the beginnings of the explosion burgeon in a cloud of yellow and red and gold and orange and a roar of sound. Instinctively, his hand tightened round the kris. He didn’t feel the pain because right then sound and light blurred and melted into one, and it felt as if the air itself was bruising and crushing him.

So this is what it is like to die
.

It didn’t happen. He was still there.
Cold
, not burned. Freezing. Shivering. Still lying on top of Sorrel. He could feel the rise and fall of her breathing, but otherwise she wasn’t stirring. His hand, slick with blood – his blood – was still wrapped around the kris blade. His palm was cut. When he opened his other hand, all that remained of the feather was a heap of gold-coloured dust that sifted through his fingers.

He tried to rise, but couldn’t lift himself more than a couple of
inches. He turned his head to look sideways. What he saw mystified him. He was looking at… glass? Flawed glass three or four inches thick! No, wait, that made no sense. He touched it with a finger. Va be poxed, it was
ice
, not glass.

Turning his head still further, and wriggling sideways slightly so he could look over his shoulder, he saw it above him… more ice. He was
cocooned
in the stuff. He thought back to the moment before the explosion: he had asked to be cold and wet and safe.

One thing about witcheries and
sakti
, he decided: they could be far too literal.

A minute later, one of the sailors from
Golden Petrel
was battering at the ice with a rock to break their prison open.

She was wrapped in fog.

“I’ve done all I can.” Grig Cranald’s voice. Muffled, as if it came from a long way away. “We need Surgeon Barklee, or better still a witchery healer.”

“It will be hours before we get to Twite, even if this wind holds.” That was Lord Juster Dornbeck. No mistaking his beautifully articulated drawl.

“She is strong.” That was Ardhi. Good, he was still alive. And so was she. Sorrel felt a surge of gratitude.

She opened her eyes, and saw him standing there, the brown of his skin muddy and blotched as if he was ill. He was holding her hand. She couldn’t make sense of anything because there was a hole in her memory. The last thing she recalled was gripping the kris and running. No, trying to run, and being unable to do more than crawl. The essence of a nightmare. Before that? A man, a dagger. He’d cut into her side; she remembered blood and pain. Yes, there it was again. Stabbing along her ribs.

Yet surely she was on board ship now, and wasn’t this the captain’s cabin? Someone was dribbling sugar water into her mouth. She swallowed to avoid choking.

“Don’t move.” Mate Grig Cranald’s voice. “You have a wound deep in your left side and you’ve lost a lot of blood. That’s why you feel so weak. I’ve stitched it up, but it’s important that it doesn’t start bleeding again, so you mustn’t move.”

She wanted to agree with that, but the words would not come. She closed her eyes and drifted away.

When she awoke again, it was dark outside. The familiar sounds of a ship on the move were comforting. The ropes sang, the masts creaked, the hull whispered – a hundred different sounds she’d come to recognise over the months. And in her nostrils, the saltiness of seawater, the tang of wet rope – and the smell of the fragrant oil that Ardhi used on his hands to stop them being chafed by salt-soaked wet ropes.

She smiled. The aroma reminded her of so much that was good in the world. “Ardhi,” she said without opening her eyes.

“I’m here. Don’t move too much.”

More water dribbled, and she drank greedily this time. She cracked her lids apart. “I feel so tired.”

“I want you to drink more.” He pushed a straw between her lips and she sucked up something sweet. She drank as much as she could, then pushed it away. “How did I get back here?”

He smiled at someone standing to her side. “Saker.”

She turned her head slightly to see him. “Dear friend.” She smiled weakly. “Should have listened to your nagging.”

“Probably. But your messing with gunpowder did the trick in the end. The explosion and the resultant fire killed almost everyone in that particular encampment, and it distracted the other lancers elsewhere. They thought they were being attacked by a
huge
force of men bombarding them with cannon. Many dropped their weapons and ran away. We dealt with the rest and our casualties were low. The besiegers have vanished and I gather that the local farmers are exacting revenge for the months of pillage of their farms by dispatching the deserters.
You
are the hero of the battle.”

She laughed, winced and decided not to do that again. Va, but she was weak.

“There’s one… not so good thing,” he added. “I used another piece of feather. We had six between us, and now we’ve used three. Yet we haven’t come close to Fox – and we have Piper and her twin to think of too. Perhaps we need a feather piece for each of them.”

To kill or to cure. If they could.

He rubbed a hand over his head. “I don’t know why the Rani couldn’t have told us more about how they could be used.”

“I don’t think she knew herself how they would work in the Va-cherished Hemisphere,” said Ardhi. “How could she? She wasn’t familiar even with your witcheries, let alone the origins of your sorcerers.”

“Then maybe she should have given us something more powerful.”

Ardhi quirked an eyebrow. “Like a whole regalia plume—?”

Saker sighed. “Yes, I know. That would have been madness. She did her best, and she risked much to trust us.”

“You haven’t said
how
you used the feather to save me, Saker,” Sorrel said. “My last memory was terror that the gunpowder was going to explode and I was going to die.”

He handed her the water with a warning look. Hastily she started to drink.

“When I reached you, the kegs were already on the verge of exploding. I had no time to carry you out of the way. All I could think to do was to hold the feather tight, grip the dagger, and think of anything that could save us both.”

“Like what?”

“I thought of being safe and cold and wet and protected. There was no time to be more specific.”

“Sweet cankers, Saker! Just tell me what happened!”

“I’m not sure you are going to believe it.”

“I’ve been to a land where birds rule and can talk inside your head, I’ve seen age-old shrines disappear – and you think I will have trouble believing what you’re about to tell me?”

“There was a stream a few paces away, remember? The water came out of it, surrounded us, and turned into ice.” When she stared at him, startled, he said, “I
told
you it was hard to believe.”

“
Ice?
”

“A wall of ice, a hand-span thick. Part of it was smashed by flying debris, and the heat of the explosion melted some, but enough was left to keep us safe.”

Ardhi added, “A connection between the
sakti
of my islands and the Way of the Flow in yours. A combination that saved you.”

“Thank you,” she said to Saker. “You risked your life for me.”

He smiled at her. “Just returning a favour.”

“Where are we going now?”

“We need to find a healer for you, so we’re sailing to Twite. We don’t want that wound of yours turning septic. We’ll be there tomorrow morning. After that, we are going to the main Twite shrine. If I am right, we will have a message there from Fritillary Reedling.”

The Twite healer forbade Sorrel from leaving her bed for at least a day, so when Lord Juster, Prince Ryce, Saker and Ardhi set off from
Golden Petrel
’s berth to walk to Twite’s main shrine-oak, they left her behind.

Prince Ryce grumbled all the way, much to Saker’s irritation, saying he didn’t understand how anyone could communicate with an invisible keeper at an invisible shrine. “This is a waste of time,” he muttered as they strode through the streets of the port. “I want to ensure the safety of my wife and son. I ought to be confronting my father!”

“Deposing a king is not a step to be taken lightly,” Juster said.

Ryce looked at him in surprise. “Do you really think there’s a question about who is more important to me? King Edwayn betrayed not only his own family, but also his country. As far as I am concerned my father is but the shell of a king. He needs to be deprived of his throne.” He caught the look Saker gave Ardhi, and added, “Master Witan, not a word, please.”

“No, Your Highness,” he said dutifully.

As he’d expected, the place where the oak had been was now a mess of prickles wreathed in mist. Lord Juster looked over at Saker. “I suppose this is where you do your stuff with the eagle.”

At least the bird was not hungry this time, so it didn’t fight him as he cajoled it down to the ground. When he tied his letter to its leg, it did however stab at him with its beak, drawing blood. He calmed it with a soothing sound in the back of his throat, and sent it on its way.

“What did you write?” Ardhi asked as the bird took off.

“Just that we are here, and asking if they have a message for us from Pontifect Fritillary. Oh, and I said the siege of Gromwell had been lifted and that His Highness is with us.”

“And how long will we have to wait for a reply?” Ryce asked.

Saker shrugged.

“That look,” Ryce said, “bordered on disrespect, witan!”

“It was supposed to,” he replied cheerfully. “I figure that we all can treat you as a bosom comrade for at
least
three years on the basis of lifting the siege.”

“Absolutely,” Juster agreed. “Possibly even four. In fact, I expect to have my next foray into privateering funded out of the royal treasury.”

“You fobbing bastards. As penance for your disrespectful perfidy, I can make you all walk barefoot dressed in sackcloth from here to land’s end at Gilly Point!”

“That wouldn’t worry me too much,” Ardhi replied, looking down at his unshod feet. “I’ve already walked barefoot from Lowmeer to Ardrone once.”

“He’s not joking,” Saker said. “He did.”

“Then maybe your penance would be to wear shoes?” Ryce suggested.

Juster laughed. “He’s got you there, Ardhi.”

Ryce looked at Ardhi, interested. “You’re a sailor and yet you walked? Why?”

“A long story,” Ardhi said.

“Some day I hope to hear it.” He sobered, and added, “I may never be able to repay you all for what you’ve done. I won’t forget the risks you have taken, nor your loyalty. I have no idea what I will be able to offer you, any of you, but I will tell you this: if you help unite me with Princess Bealina and my son, you can name your price.”

“Oh, in that case, I am sure we will oblige,” Lord Juster said, “although did I not once warn you about making too many promises to your ne’er-do-well friends?”

“Who said any of you were my friends?” he countered, arching an eyebrow. “A nulled witan, a reckless privateer, a trickster handmaiden – who mysteriously now has a name other than Celandine Marten, which no one has explained – and a shoeless Va-forsaken islander? You jest, Juster. Whatever could a disinherited and discredited penniless prince, with only a cannon-battered ruin to his name, possibly have in common with such a passel of reprobates?”