‘King Marcus will provide barbarian regiments to swell our ranks,’ said Gyal. ‘And I have sent for the skels. My gold calls thousands more fighters to our flag – mercenaries and local free companies and piratesfor-hire. I will muster the forces to make an end of this campaign to my satisfaction.’
‘Think with your mind, not your wounded pride. I intend to travel home and attend the court . . . ensure that the emperor receives the right reports from our campaign.’ She stared across at the secret police’s master. ‘I am sure that there are many who will be only too glad to spin a different tale.’
Apolleon nodded thoughtfully. ‘That is not a bad idea. No, not bad at all. Fill the slave markets with prisoners. Let the celestial caste have a taste of the booty that will return with the punishment fleet. Whet their appetites. You can enter mourning for Lady Cassandra. Circae and her allies will be unable to act against you, not without their manoeuvres being perceived as the height of bad taste. Buy extra time to claim the Diamond Throne.’
‘And how fares the health of the noble Emperor Jaelis?’ asked Gyal.
Apolleon grinned. ‘Less and less noble every week. Where the emperor’s mind fails, his body now follows. Princess Helrena is correct. The time to act is approaching.’
‘When the emperor dies, Apolleon, I will need the backing of your hoodsmen,’ said Helrena. ‘During the scramble for the throne the threat of the secret police will help dissuade our foes from courting the army. None of us can afford a military conflict inside the Imperium. Announcing your support early would be advantageous to us.’
‘If in bad form, given Emperor Jaelis still warms the throne,’ said Apolleon. ‘You must be patient. I will not be returning to the court for a little while yet. I haven’t been dispatched to this far-called backwater to check on your progress . . . I come hunting for the outlaw Sariel Skel-bane.’
‘Him again?’ spat Helrena. ‘Your obsession with capturing that old vagrant helped seal our defeat during the slave revolt. Is his distraction to cost me the throne now, too?’
‘There are matters beyond your concern,’ said Apolleon. ‘And this is one of them. You need merely accept that Sariel Skel-bane’s long overdue execution is necessary to a great many things. Including
your
future.’
‘It’s my future that interests me, not ancient history. I need your support in the capital, in Vandis,’ demanded Helrena. ‘Not settling old grudges against some elderly bandit who made the hoodsmen appear incompetent during the first flush of his youth.’
‘Those “grudges” you speak of are mine to settle.’
Helrena appeared disgusted by the reply. ‘So now I have
two
thickheaded pride-swelled allies to worry about? May my ancestors send me women as allies rather than men.’
‘We are on the right course, Princess,’ reassured Apolleon. ‘The art of politics is the art of the unexpected. And what could be more unexpected than two arch-enemies returning from campaign as firm allies? After the union of the disparate factions supporting your houses, you will possess an almost unstoppable momentum towards the throne. All the more powerful given your rivals will be taken completely by surprise. Unprepared for the marriage and the realignment of power it entails. An adroit stratagem.’
‘Yes. It’s almost as if we don’t need you,’ said Helrena.
‘You will discover how much you require the hoodsmen’s support after I return to Vandia,’ said Apolleon. ‘I might have suggested this fascinating new strategy myself, except I imagined it ending with one of your daggers slipped into the other’s spine.’
‘Let love bloom in self-interest’s soil,’ said Prince Gyal.
‘I would not expect to remain Circae’s favoured pet when she learns of this news,’ Apolleon warned the prince. ‘I believe the old woman’s hatred of her ex-daughter-in-law is a touch greater than her regard for you.’
‘It will not matter,’ said Gyal. ‘Helrena and I shall seize the throne together. A new emperor and empress, a new age for the Imperium. Circae will have to accept the news with good grace. Who would dare to oppose an empress?’
Apolleon’s wily eyes crinkled. ‘You might be surprised.’
‘She will accept it or learn how easy it is for an old woman who has lived her life to pass away with the night.’
‘Circae’s support would be useful,’ said Apolleon. ‘Who knows, perhaps your union will soften her heart?’
‘Granite doesn’t soften,’ growled Helrena. ‘It only calcifies.’
‘Go to Vandia then,’ said Prince Gyal. He pointed angrily at Helrena, sounding for all the world like a petulant child. ‘Leave the war for me to prosecute. I will win it and bathe in the escaped slaves’ blood before I return.’
‘And I always imagined the mark of an emperor was how much blood he spared rather than shed,’ said Helrena.
Gyal muttered and stalked away. Duncan watched Prince Gyal and the secret police’s master depart the chamber together before he approached Helrena.
Good riddance to both of them. With any luck, Apolleon will lose himself in the wilderness chasing shadows, while Gyal’s skull will be crushed by loose boulders inside the Valley of the Hell-winds.
‘Tell me that you are really returning to Vandia to seize the throne for yourself ?’ said Duncan. ‘That you didn’t mean any of what you just said?’
‘You forget your place,’ snapped Helrena. ‘It is true that this alliance wasn’t something I arrived at willingly, but Apolleon is right about one thing. The momentum from the union will carry me all the way to the Diamond Throne.’
‘You can rule alone,’ argued Duncan.
‘I could
fail
alone,’ said Helrena. ‘You think the leadership of the Imperium is a prize waiting lonely to be claimed? There is not a merchant, citizen or soldier in the Imperium who would not risk everything they possess for the throne if they thought they had just a chance at seizing it. With Gyal’s supporters added to my own,
my
chance is there. Without Gyal’s forces? I’m just another head of house jostling hungrily among the pack. Taking control is merely the start of the game. Long after the throne is claimed, new allies will be needed to hold the empire and solidify support. Time to gather endorsements and win over old opponents through patronage and appointments.’
‘I haven’t forgotten my place,’ said Duncan. ‘It’s by your side.’
Helrena shook her head. ‘Once. No longer. I must leave the bulk of my guardsmen fighting with Gyal’s forces or risk being accused of abandoning my post. My return to Vandia has to be interpreted as a mother’s mourning, not the dereliction of her duty.’
‘Cassandra’s not dead!’ shouted Duncan.
‘She
is
dead,’ roared Helrena. ‘Rotting flesh and a lost soul struggling to recover her honour through a clean death. She’s no longer a Vandian. No longer celestial caste. How can she be anything other than dead?’
‘I don’t understand you,’ said Duncan.
How can you even think like that?
‘Then understand that Vandia is strength,’ said Helrena. ‘The day the empire is not is the day it falls.’ She looked at Paetro. ‘You will be posted here with Duncan of Weyland. Assist the prince in burning rocks until his doltish pride is sated.’
Paetro bowed, sadly. ‘As you say, Princess.’
‘No!’ begged Duncan.
‘You are banished from the Castle of Snakes, Duncan Landor,’ said Helrena. ‘You will stay here until the day I find your nature more agreeable. Serve with the punishment fleet. After the fall of HadraHareer, remain with the empire’s embassy in Weyland. Put your local knowledge to good use for Vandia.’
‘Please . . .’
But Helrena was already striding down a corridor away from the room.
‘How can she act so coldly towards Cassandra, her own daughter?’
To me
.
‘The princess feels pain,’ said Paetro. ‘As much as you or I. More . . . she’s the little highness’s mother. But Helrena’s too much of a celestial caste to show it. No weakness, lad. Not in front of us. Especially not in front of Prince Gyal or Apolleon.’
Duncan shook his head in frustration. ‘This is wrong. All of it . . . wrong. Helrena’s marriage to that serpent Gyal. Abandoning Cassandra. Leaving us behind.’
‘It’s how the Vandians think, lad. How could we remain at Princess Helrena’s side? Reminding her of the little highness every time she saw us.’
I thought I was free of my past. But here I am, as trapped inside Weyland as I was in the sky mines before I won my freedom. How the saints must be laughing at the irony. ‘
Our duty is to protect Helrena. How can we manage that from Weyland?’
‘No, our first duty was to protect the little highness. And in that we failed. This campaign is our penance.’
Not for me.
‘If I’m stuck in Weyland, then I’m returning for Lady Cassandra after Hadra-Hareer falls and Gyal buggers off back home. When the campaign finishes, I’ll track Cassandra down in the steppes and carry her to Northhaven. At least she can live her life in some comfort inside Hawkland Park.’
‘The princess didn’t order that,’ warned Paetro.
‘She didn’t forbid it, either,’ said Duncan.
‘It’s not the Vandian way.’
‘So it seems. But I’m only a lower-caste citizen,’ said Duncan. ‘An ex-slave on the make. It’s my bloody way. Let Vandia believe what it will about weakness and honour, the empire seems to be too far-called to care. Here I’m Duncan Landor, heir to a great northern house. In Weyland,
I’m
the prince.’
Paetro sighed. ‘Then I’ll travel with you.’
‘I’m the one banished to this backwater, not you.’
‘I was born inside a tribute nation, lad, not the empire. I may have come to understand the Vandian code, but it wasn’t the milk I was raised on. Leaving the little highness like a wounded bird in the grass for the first prowling cat to discover sits mightily hard on me, too. Besides, someone has to keep you alive when you run into those blue-skinned brutes again.’
‘You’re a good friend, Paetro Barca.’
‘Remind me again if we survive Gyal’s little war. A prince’s pride and vanity aren’t going to be much armour against mountain gales and cannon shells aimed our way from Hadra-Hareer’s ramparts.’
Duncan shrugged.
It’s a siege. How dangerous can it be?
He had a feeling he was going to find out.
VISITORS FOR WILLOW
Willow welcomed Anna Kurtain into her lodgings with a sense of relief.
Whatever problems Anna has, they’re small beans compared to the complaints and worries of the refugees fleeing Weyland
.
‘Ever since I was wounded by that assassin inside Midsburg,’ said Anna, ‘Owen’s treated me like I’m a porcelain heirloom. Far too valuable to put in harm’s way.’
‘He’s just worried about you,’ said Willow. She had a feeling that almost losing Anna had awakened the prince’s true feelings for his long-term companion.
And about time, too.
Of course, it wasn’t just Anna’s wounds that had nearly taken the woman away from the prince. Jacob Carnehan had kidnapped Anna and used the threat of making sure Owen never saw her again to force the prince to abandon the rebels’ doomed last-ditch stand at Midsburg.
Anna shook her head, angrily. ‘It’s insulting is what it is. I was the one who kept Owen alive in the sky mines, and after that, when we escaped to Weyland. Without me, Owen’s true identity would have been betrayed a dozen times over to the Vandians.’
‘I understand all about being treated with kid gloves,’ said Willow, rubbing her heavy, relentless belly.
‘In fairness, you aren’t in much condition to go trekking with your Northhaven boy,’ said Anna.
‘Sometimes I wish I’d been born barren,’ said Willow. ‘Then Viscount Wallingbeck would have divorced me quickly enough, however much money my family promised to lavish over his estate. I’d be worthless to the viscount. Worthless as a game piece to the all-mighty House of Landor as well.’
‘Don’t say that. That’s nothing to wish for. You have to believe that things happened as they did for a reason,’ said Anna. ‘Owen survived Bad Marcus’ assassination of his family. Then he survived as a slave in Vandia. Finally, he escaped and helped us all return home. What’s the odds of all those survivals lumped together? Owen’s fated to cast the usurper off his throne. He has to be.’
Willow wished that was true but couldn’t for the life of her see how it’d transpire now. ‘And what about you and how things have gone down?’
‘I’ve given a lot of thought to that,’ said Anna. ‘Back where I used to live near the Lakes, my brother and I were meant to be travelling south with our grandmother. She was going to take the springs at Tresterer and wanted us along with her to see a little of the world. Paid for our hotel rooms and our fares with the Guild of Rails and everything. But the evening before we were due to travel, she slipped in a puddle in the street and broke her leg. The trip had to be put off. Four days later, our town was hit by skel slavers and my brother and me were grabbed up. If it hadn’t rained the night before . . . if my grandmother had gone a different way through town . . . if a shopkeeper had just mopped up that puddle. We would have been safely out of the way hundreds of mile from the raid.’
‘And then you wouldn’t have been taken to the sky mines to save Prince Owen’s life,’ said Willow. She could tell from the pain in Anna’s voice how much the woman missed her brother. Willow and the other escaped slaves had at least been able to reassure Anna he was still alive, though. She had encountered the young man inside the great aerial carrier the skels used to launch their slave raids – his clockmaker’s training keeping him alive as an engineer repairing the city-sized aircraft’s machinery.
‘That’s about the size of it.’
‘Well, if fate’s got a place for me, I have to believe it’s by Carter’s side,’ said Willow. It was strange now, looking back on events. Being the heir to a great house meant that Willow should never have lacked for suitors. But in reality, growing up in Northhaven where everyone knew who you were and who your father was, it had been a curse of eternal loneliness. As though there had been a glass wall laid around Willow which nobody had dared to scale for fear of the wrath of the mighty Landors. Carter was one of the few people who hadn’t seemed bothered by her status, although it had taken the horror of surviving the sky mines to bring them both together. And now the Vandians and their empire and their revenge had driven the two of them apart, at least physically. She tried not to think of how much she missed Carter. What danger he might be in out in the wilds. Willow thought she heard a noise from the back of her rooms, but she dismissed it. There were always gurgling water pipes and rustling air vents inside the city. ‘But Carter’s off with Sariel, chasing the vagrant’s ale-addled ancient fancies and I’m trapped here. As big as a whale and near as beached as one, too.’
‘He’s a strange one, that Sariel,’ agreed Anna. ‘But he’s got powers. Without the old wanderer and Carter’s father, we would never have escaped Vandia alive.’
‘And where else would we be, I wonder?’
‘I’ve got as much reason to distrust Father Carnehan as any, the way he’s used me. But as my father used to say about our local assemblyman, he may be a son-of-a-bitch, but he’s
our
son-of-a-bitch. We’re going to need a few like Jacob Carnehan in Hadra-Hareer in the days to come.’
‘You think we’ll survive here, Anna?’
‘This city is a hell of a place to attack,’ shrugged the prince’s bodyguard. ‘The Vandians’ first assault broke apart like a glass bottle hurled off the mountain peaks. But you know as well as I do how the Imperium thinks.’
‘They won’t give up, will they?’
‘Main reason they’re here is to punish us for humiliating them in the slave revolt. Once the local town bully loses his reputation, it’s one short step from victimizer to victimized.’
‘Vandia’s not exactly local, though,’ said Willow.
‘That’s one thing working in our favour. This war’s got to have the longest supply line in history.’
‘You sound like Father Carnehan.’
Anna’s eyes narrowed. ‘I sound like
General
Carnehan. He knows war, I’ll give him that. A lot more than he knows about holy texts and gods and saints.’
Maybe God’s kept him alive. Or maybe it’s the Devil’s stealers who’ve preserved the man?
Willow shook her head and trembled. It still seemed a madness, the difference between the man she had known from childhood and the man she now watched stalking through Hadra-Hareer’s passages. The man of peace who shunned all violence. Who had given gentle sermons and chiding admonishments whenever his congregation erred from mercy and peace. The Jacob Carnehan Willow knew had been broken and something terrible had slipped out of the shell that had been left. Perhaps the monster had always been inside. The saints know, since the civil war had started, she had seen monsters crawl out of too many.
Is there one inside me, too?
‘I wanted us to run,’ said Willow. ‘I asked Carter to leave with me.’
‘How far can you flee?’ asked Anna. ‘Further than the range of a Vandian warship? Further than their slavers’ planes? There’s always evil in the world. If not the Imperium’s, then someone else’s. For too much of my life, I was kept caged by evil. I don’t reckon I’ve got much running left in me. You can’t run to freedom. You just have to plant your feet and take it.’
‘By force,’ sighed Willow.
‘You could try reason, good intentions and fine words,’ said Anna. ‘But when the brutes coming at you have got a whip in one hand and a pistol in the other, you won’t be debating for long.’
‘I wish there was another way.’
‘You find it, Willow, be sure to let me know. What—?’ Too late, Anna Kurtain heard the movement behind her and snatched at her pistol holster, but the large Rodalian who seemed to appear from nowhere seized her from behind, covering her face with a rag stinking of chloroform.
How’s this thief broken in?
Willow took a step back, nearly tumbling over a chair. Anna possessed a lithe strength . . . the fitness of youth honed by years of hard labour inside the sky mines; but taken by surprise it was of little use. The prince’s bodyguard struggled in her attacker’s massive muscled arms, her boots kicking against the air until she trembled to stillness and was unceremoniously dropped over a rug. The assault had only taken seconds.
Thief ? Robber? One of the factions that want Rodal to stay out of Weyland’s war? I don’t have any weapons inside the room.
Willow threw the chair in front of her and backed away, her eyes casting desperately around for any heavy object she could grasp and wield as a mace. As she looked she realized too late that another attacker had circled behind her.
No!
The second assailant seized her arms and pressed a blade against her soft throat. She groaned as she recognized a too-familiar stench. Aged beer and sweat and malice. Willow moaned again as a spiteful voice sounded hot against her ear, confirming her assailant’s identity.
Nocks.
Her step-mother’s brutal terrier.
What’s he doing inside Rodal? He should be across the border serving with my father’s regiment.
The large Rodalian who had broken into her apartment advanced on her. Willow lashed a foot at him, but he stopped short before her boot could connect. Nocks tightened his grip.
‘Don’t you mind the big lad, Willowy Willow,’ rasped Nocks. ‘Norbu’s something of an expert on raiding cities and carrying away saddle-wives.’
Willow had scarce seen a Rodalian as large or wide as this man.
And why is Nocks talking about saddle-wives? That’s a steppes tradition, nothing to do with the mountains?
‘You did not tell me that the woman you sought was with child,’ said the brute named as Norbu. ‘It is always bad luck to claim a saddlewife carrying another’s son.’
‘Oh, this one is nothing but bad luck any way you cut it,’ laughed Nocks.
‘I’ll scream and you won’t dare use that knife,’ hissed Willow, hoping the evil manservant could still be controlled by fear of her father.
The squat brute snorted in amusement. ‘Ain’t that the beauty of having your room buried under so many tonnes of stone. You work your lungs all you like, Willow Landor. It’s just you, me and the big lad down here.’
‘Leave her and let’s carry away the other girl,’ urged Norbu. ‘Take the dark-skinned one instead. She is a beauty worthy of any man’s tent – she fought fast and well, too. This Willow’s belly will slow your escape down.’
‘I’m stealing to order,’ said Nocks, clenching Willow roughly as she tried to struggle free. ‘Much like yourself, son. This little firebrand is the wife of a nobleman down south . . . and he’s the one who baked the bun in her oven. The man wants her back with the bun too, and more importantly, so does the woman I serve.’
‘My step-mother can go to hell,’ Willow spat.
Norbu did not seem happy with Willow’s state, but he lifted his rag still wet with the sickly-sweet stench of chloroform. ‘Then I shall use the sleeping cloth and let us be done with this.’
‘All in good time,’ snickered Nocks. ‘I scratched your back out on the slopes and this is where you scratch mine . . . a man should beat down on his steak a little before he consumes it. You made the mistress look like a fool, Willowy Willow. Betraying the marriage she kindly arranged for you and running off with the pretender and his rebel army. So I’m taking you back to Lady Leyla and the viscount. He wants his child out of your belly before the mistress gives you a proper chastisement as payment for your double-dealing. Made her promise to give me first crack of that whip.’
‘My sham of a marriage has already been annulled by Prince Owen.’
‘You want to talk shams, how about setting a boy-pretender against a man-king? Takes an army to make a man king, and the horse you so unwisely backed don’t have one anymore. Just a handful of bandits and bushwhackers running around the north, slowly being hunted down. That and a few deserters holed up in the rocks around Rodal. Prince Owen says he’s divorced you? After I roll you across the border inside a smuggler’s barrel, you’ll find out whose law holds sway. In this card game, I’m betting a king against a prince.’
‘Jacob Carnehan will kill you for this!’
And if he doesn’t, I will.
‘I surely do hope he comes after us to try. The big general in the city. But no. I reckon the ol’ badger’s picked his tunnel to die in, and the Vandians will fly here soon enough to finish the job they started. You and me will be long gone before the city’s sacked, though. You always did like your reading back in Hawkland Park. You can read about the fall of Hadra-Hareer in the newspapers when you’re returned to your husband’s loving household.’
Willow tried to shove herself back, surprise the brute into loosening his grip, but the ugly goblin stood as hard as stone. ‘To hell with Wallingbeck, too.’
‘You’ve been a grave disappointment to all of us, girl,’ chuckled Nocks. ‘Time you began setting matters right.’
The giant Rodalian advanced on Willow and pushed the warm wet cloth down hard across her nose, pinching her nostrils. She tried to choke and cough her way past the cloying fumes, find fresh air as her eyes watered and stung, but she met only darkness.
It seemed like Carter had been crossing the steppes for months, although the reality of the matter was that he could count his journey in weeks. Of course, if it had just been
his
journey alone, he might have borne it better. But not only was Carter travelling with Sariel – fallen back through habit into wild boasts and implausible stories – but he’d also been saddled with the argumentative presence of their pilot, Beula Fetterman. She should have flown her two passengers into the steppes and held back enough fuel in the plane’s tank to return to Rodal’s border fortresses. Instead, she had continued to point the aircraft into the grasslands until its engines were sucking on fumes and vapours, until they had landed and been forced to abandon the plane on the endless prairie; far outside the range of recovery by anyone other than a train of wagons filled with aviation fuel. Fetterman blamed a faulty fuel gauge for the error, but wasn’t that the point of a supposedly trained pilot . . . someone to double-check the work of the ground crew before passengers entrusted their lives to her aerial craft? Now, not only did Carter have to put up with Fetterman’s complaints and caustic remarks, but she’d failed to report their safe landing to the authorities in Rodal. Carter could only imagine what Willow was thinking now in Hadra-Hareer, failing to receive the report of their safe arrival.
She’ll be worried sick. And she’s got enough to worry about with the war on her doorstep and a baby on the way
. Carter felt guilty about leaving the woman he loved, even though putting her in the way of the hostile nomads would have been insanity. Her absence made him feel guilty about being here, trekking after Sariel, instead of trapped in Hadra-Hareer, hemmed in by Rodalian mountain ranges. A near-powerless witness to the final stages of the war they had lost across the border. Here, the ground was soft. The grass was thick and green. The sky and the clouds ran on forever, wider than any human could hold on to. Out here, one boot in front of the other, he was getting closer to something. Or at least, he felt he was.
But maybe what I’m doing is running away. From Willow and another man’s child. From the fight in Weyland and what my father’s turning into. Damn it, even when I joined the rebel army it’s felt like I was running away half the time. I escaped the sky mines and I’ve been fleeing ever since.