The Golden Cage (24 page)

Her arm hurt constantly, the jerking of the horse's walk making it almost impossible to concentrate on tapping the Grym to speed her healing. At least the crossbow quarrel that had hit her had not been poisoned and the wound had been clean. Once the field surgeon had stitched it up and the bleeding had stopped, she had gritted her teeth against the discomfort and tried to show a brave face to her guard.

There had been a small but noticeable shift in the hierarchy of the group. In the days before the attack the captain had taken his orders from her and passed them on to his men without so much as consulting Clun. That was fair enough, Beulah supposed; Captain Celtin was an experienced warrior priest, and despite what Melyn might
say, Clun was still a novitiate who hadn't finished his training. But since the fight the captain had deferred to Clun in almost everything. The whole troop looked up to him now. For his part, Clun was bemused by their sudden change in attitude, unaware of the stir his use of two blades of light had caused.

Beulah had asked him about it, and he had merely replied that he had needed two blades to fight off so many attackers. No one had ever told him he couldn't have two at once. It had seemed the natural thing to do.

She smiled at the memory as her horse walked slowly down the well-used track towards the sleepy little town. Ahead of her, the gates stood closed, but Corris promised hot water to wash in, clean linen and dry beds, and food that hadn't been burned to a crisp over a campfire. It had never been part of the plan to spend long there; their itinerary took them swiftly downstream, first to Beylinstown, then to Castell Glas. Beulah would send a messenger ahead, warning Lord Beylin of their delay and requesting more patrols on the roads. Meantime she had business to attend to in this backwater.

As the party approached the gates, they flew open and a band of mounted soldiers rode out at a gallop. Without a word, the warrior priests formed a shield around the main party, fanning out to cover the road and the verges alongside. As the soldiers neared, the warrior priests conjured their blades, ready for an attack. But before they were closer than a half-hundred paces, the troop of soldiers reined to a halt, their leader leaping from his horse and kneeling in the road, where he remained until the travellers halted in front of him.

‘Your
Majesty, I have just received word of your visit. Please forgive me. Had I known, I would have ridden out to meet you days ago. The woods around here are not as safe as …' He trailed off as he looked up and saw the state of the royal party, his eyes widening, his mouth hanging open. Beulah nudged her horse forward, noting idly that it responded much better to her commands than the previous animal. She rode through the line of warrior priests, Clun at her side, and stopped within sword reach of the kneeling man.

‘And you are?'

‘Captain Herren of the Corris Guard, Your Majesty.' The soldier bowed even lower.

‘Look at me, Captain Herren.' He complied, and Beulah stared into his eyes. He wasn't a man given to fear; battle didn't worry him, she could see. And yet he was plainly terrified of her. She brushed his mind, trying to discern whether what he said was true. It was possible that their messenger hadn't arrived, that he lay somewhere in the woods, feeding the animals, naked and dead at the hands of the same brigands who had attacked her party. Possible but unlikely.

‘When did you hear of our visit, Captain?'

‘Your Majesty, are you wounded? What happened?'

‘Answer the queen's question.' Clun conjured his blade of light, thinner and longer than normal, and pointed it straight at Herren's head, the tip just a hand's breadth from his sweat-sheened brow.

‘Just this morning.' The captain gulped. ‘We'd heard you was going to Beylinstown, thought you might come by this way, since it's on the road. But we didn't hear
nothing. Then we got word of a big party attacked out on the moors. We've been tracking a group of bandits around there for months now. I swear, Your Majesty, if I'd known I'd have been out there myself waiting for you.'

Beulah tried to keep up with the man's racing thoughts, fighting against the pain from her wound. There was some subterfuge in him, she could tell, but it wasn't aimed directly at her. It was true that he hadn't known she was coming, true too that they had been hunting a band of brigands in the nearby woods for months now, but the reason he hadn't been out on the road was less clear, as if the captain wasn't quite sure himself. She would let him live, at least for now.

‘Send word to your lord. We will be taking up residence for a few days. Our wounded need tending.' Beulah nodded, and Clun extinguished his blade to the captain's palpable relief.

‘Of course, Your Majesty. I will see to it myself.' He bowed and rose.

‘Oh, Captain. One more thing.'

‘Your Majesty?'

‘You needn't worry about that band of brigands any more. We left their bodies for the crows.'

The captain nodded his understanding, swinging up into his saddle and turning back towards the town. He rode off at a similarly frenetic pace to the gallop that had brought him, his men falling in behind. The gates stayed open behind them, and the royal party passed through at a more leisurely pace.

Beulah's impression of Corris worsened with closer inspection. The three-storey buildings she had seen from
afar were almost all warehouses ranged along the riverbank, and all of them were run-down. Some had no roofs, only weathered grey timber rafters reaching for the sky like skeletal fingers. Crumbling eye-socket windows stared sightlessly on to the streets and one terrace end had collapsed, spilling rubble into the swollen river. As they rode past, children stopped playing among the stones to stare open-mouthed at the warrior priests. Clothed in rags, they wore no shoes on their feet.

Tightly packed houses lined the narrow streets leading from the riverfront up to the castle. Beulah saw occasional flickers of movement from windows, the odd door pulled hastily closed, but otherwise the town seemed deserted. Tufts of grass and small flowers grew between the cobbles. Everything had about it an air of seedy decay.

The castle itself wasn't much better. Two elderly guards stood at the open gates, but it would have been as easy to get in over the rubble where a section of the wall had collapsed. Wooden scaffolding suggested that repairs were under way, but there was no sign of any workmen, no mixing of mortar or shaping of stones, and the rickety structure erected around the breach looked like it would crack under the weight of no more than an apprentice.

Though the royal party was not large, it was not possible to fit them all into the courtyard. The castle itself consisted of an ancient round tower five or six storeys high, with slits for windows and a narrow wooden door at the top of a steep flight of stone steps. Beulah recognized the design from her studies of warfare; it dated back at least five centuries. Any self-respecting lord would have
demolished it and started again, or at least remodelled it into a more comfortable home. Her hopes of decent medical care for the wounded, of hot water and baths, receded. More so when the door to the tower creaked open.

Captain Herren, his riding cloak swapped for a moth-eaten herald's tabard, walked slowly down the steps ahead of a decrepit old man bent low and supporting his weight on a gnarled cane. When they finally reached the bottom of the steps, the captain once more went down on one knee – over-theatrically, Beulah thought.

‘Your Majesty, on behalf of Lord Queln, I bid you welcome to Corris.'

‘And is Lord Queln incapable of welcoming me himself?' Beulah dismounted from her horse, not without some discomfort, and stepped forward. The old man shuffled a bit, wheezing as if the walk down the steps had exhausted him. He coughed once, then looked up through rheumy eyes, blinking as if he had only just noticed his courtyard crammed with people, horses and wagons.

‘Eh? Herren? What's all this about then? What've you dragged me down here for?'

‘Her Majesty the queen, sir.' The captain tried to whisper out of the side of his mouth and smile at Beulah at the same time. Had she not been in some pain, she might have found it amusing. As it was, her anger, never far from the surface, came to the boil. Who were these people to treat her like a common traveller? And what lord could run his fiefdom so poorly that he couldn't even afford to
maintain his own castle? The same sort of lord who would let armed brigands roam the roads he was supposed to protect. The sort of lord who might soon find himself without a fiefdom.

‘Lord Queln, is it?' She walked to the old man, who looked up with considerable difficulty, seeing her for the first time. His back was so bent and his neck so crooked he seemed to spend most of his time peering at the ground.

‘And who are you, young lady?' Queln took quick glances, tilting his head sideways in a manner that reminded Beulah disturbingly of a fly on a sunlit windowsill. After each glimpse he dropped his head swiftly, as if holding it up pained him.

‘I am your queen.'

It finally seemed to sink into the old man's doddery brain. He stiffened noticeably, lifting his head once more, slowly this time, and fixing Beulah with a watery stare. Then he dropped his head back down again, bending his back even more so that she feared he would topple over into the dirt of the courtyard.

‘Your Majesty, forgive my rudeness. I was not informed of your visit.'

‘So everyone tells me. But it's of no matter. We have wounded who need tending, and all of us could do with a wash and a good meal. Have your staff prepare some rooms for us.'

‘Of course, ma'am. At once.' Queln looked from side to side as if trying to find his servant. ‘Herren?'

‘I am here, sir.' The captain stood and touched his lord's arm as if he were blind rather than addled.

‘Herren,
it seems the queen is here,' Queln said. ‘Damned odd if you ask me. I thought we had a king. But there it is. See if you can't rustle up something for her and her friends, there's a good chap. Can't have our reputation for hospitality being ruined now, can we?'

‘Indeed not, sir. I've already spoken to old Missus Benton in the kitchens, and the chambermaids are airing the guest rooms as we speak.' He turned back to Beulah, who wasn't sure whether to run Lord Queln through with her blade for his rudeness or laugh at his obvious senility. ‘My lord's not been a well man for many years now, Your Majesty. Not since his only son rode off to war and never came back. We do our best for him, but it's not easy. Please follow me. I will show you to your rooms.'

They left Lord Queln in his courtyard and followed Herren up the steps. Beyond the narrow oak door, the castle maintained the air of shabbiness it wore on the outside. What little light reached the window slits had to contend with inch-thick glass as green as water in a dying pond. The tapestries that hung from the thick stone walls may once have depicted hunting scenes or stories from the early days of the Twin Kingdoms but now were all a uniform grey. Clun walked up to one, peering closely at it as if he might be able to make out some detail. He reached forward and tapped the fabric lightly, enveloping himself in a choking cloud that tumbled down the length of the drape, from the ceiling to the floor, gathering momentum like loose snow in the mountains. Beulah hoped that their rooms would be better cleaned, though judging by the scurrying chambermaids they would more likely smell of recently disturbed dust.

‘Who
runs this fiefdom, Captain?' Beulah asked as they made their way up more narrow winding stairs to the third floor, where the main guest rooms were situated.

‘His lordship does what he can, Your Majesty. I see to the keeping of law and order, and Father Tolley runs the administration, the collection of taxes and so on. Corris isn't the port it used to be.'

‘This Father Tolley. He'd be a predicant of the Candle, I take it? One of Padraig's men.'

‘Indeed he is, Your Majesty.'

‘Correct protocol, when addressing your monarch, is to use the title Your Majesty only on first meeting. After that, you should call me ma'am. I must admit I have little time for such nonsense, but the people expect it. Now tell me, Captain. Where is this wayward Candle? Why wasn't he here to greet me?'

Captain Herren stopped mid-step, turning to face the queen. So this is his guilty little secret, Beulah thought.

‘He left for Beylinstown about three days ago, Your … ma'am.'

‘Did he say why he was going there?'

‘No, ma'am. Just that we weren't to go after the bandits until he got back. I assumed he was going to ask his superior to petition Lord Beylin for help.'

‘And that's why you weren't out on the road yesterday, when we were attacked?' Beulah skimmed the edge of the captain's thoughts, searching for duplicity and finding none. In truth, he was rather a simple-minded man. Not stupid, but not imaginative either. Good material for a guardsman, probably not the best choice for captain. She
wondered whose decision that had been, Lord Queln's or Father Tolley's

‘Yes, ma'am.'

The rooms they were shown into were surprisingly clean and spacious, though dark. A fire had been lit in the hearth, and through a small door Beulah found an ancient but large bathtub already filled with hot water. She had expected to see a stream of serving girls bringing pitchers up from the kitchens, but wide copper pipes snaked around the walls, disappearing through the stone to the back of the fireplace. Such sophisticated plumbing was so out of place in the crumbling old castle, she almost laughed.

Stripping off her road clothes, she dropped them in a pile by the door and lowered herself into the hot water, sighing in delight at one of the simpler pleasures life could bring, soaking away the dust and the aches of being so long in the saddle, while Clun attended to the wound in her arm and the ugly blistered burn on her palm.

‘Do you not find this place a little strange, my love?' she asked as he knelt by the side of the tub and massaged her shoulders.