A Fortress of Grey Ice (Book 2) (20 page)

Raina was growing accustomed to being speechless in this woman’s presence. It was hard to believe that this strange, big-boned woman had once been a great beauty, betrothed to Orwin Shank. Birna Lorn, her name was, and some old men in the roundhouse could still recall the day when Orwin and Will Hawk had fought for her hand in the graze. Not much later she had been named as a witch, for she had correctly predicted that Norala’s unborn child would be born dead.
If I ever turn into a prophet
, Raina thought dryly,
I’ll keep all the bad news to myself.

“You should learn how to kill a fish, Raina Blackhail,” Mad Binny said, clubbing another trout. “It’s good practice for killing men.” Brilliant green eyes caught the light, and Raina couldn’t decide if she saw madness or cleverness in them.

“Take me to Effie.”

“Take yourself. Door’s right there, what’s left of it. I’ll be in when I’ve headed the trout.”

Knowing that was one thing she definitely did not want to see, Raina climbed the rickety ladder and made her way inside the crannog. The room she entered was dim and warm, scented with the mulish odor of wet rot and lit by a tiny iron stove. Effie stood by the stove with her back toward Raina, stirring a little pot. She was singing as she did so, some song about the shankshounds and how they had once saved a baby from the snow. Standing at the doorway, watching her, it occurred to Raina that she had never before heard Effie Sevrance sing. When a board beneath Raina’s foot creaked, Effie started, spilling the broth.

Fear changed to recognition in an instant, and Effie ran to Raina with arms outstretched. “Raina! I’ve been making broth! Did you know you put carrots and onions in it, and then boil them till they nearly disappear?”

Raina nodded. She was still seeing Effie’s start of fear in her mind and her chest was too tight to speak.

“Binny says it won’t be done until she brings the trout and I boil their heads in it. Is Drey back yet?”

Raina had visited Effie three times in nine days, and each time she did so she was greeted with the same question: Where was Drey? Disentangling herself from the girl’s embrace, she thought what she should say.
It suits Mace to have Drey away at the moment while he decides how best to deal with you. So he keeps coming up with things your brother can do that will keep him far from home.
No, that wouldn’t do. Aloud she said, “I heard word from Paille Trotter’s son. He saw Drey ten days back at Ganmiddich, and thinks Drey will head home soon.”

Effie was not fooled by Raina’s forced optimism, and she returned dispirited to her broth.

Raina wanted nothing more than to comfort her, but she knew better than to speak lies to a child. “So, what has Mad Binny been teaching you?”

“Lots of things. Cooking. Herbs. Do you know that maggots can eat the pus from a wound and make it heal faster? And that piles shrink when you put vinegar on them?”

Raina laughed. In many ways the clan guide had been right: Effie needed to learn. Suddenly tired, Raina sat on an old chicken crate, content simply to watch Effie chop onions and stir broth. She had to believe she’d done the right thing. The guidehouse was no place for this bright and lovely girl.

In this light you could hardly see the scars. Effie’s long lustrous hair covered most of them, and the one on her cheek had been so expertly stitched by Laida Moon that it looked as if a fine feather rested there. Some would think it beautiful. Raina did.

“Here we are. Trout. Effie, put those heads in the pot. Yes, they have eyes. Too bad they didn’t use them.” Mad Binny took command of the room, detailing how the broth should be made and the fish cooked, directing Raina to the woodpile for firewood, and Effie to the storage chest for hard liquor. It was a relief to let someone else take charge for a change—even if she were a madwoman—and Raina found herself surprisingly happy to be told what to do.

When they had eaten a good plain meal of trout in its own broth and black rye bread smothered in honey, Mad Binny told Effie to go outside and try her hand at stunning passing fish with the mallet. “But it’s nearly dark,” Effie observed.

“Even better then. They’ll be half asleep already.”

Effie had no argument for that, and she picked up the mallet and let herself out. Raina had her money on the fish.

“So,” said Mad Binny, pouring a double measure of malt into Raina’s cup. “Has that old sourpuss Inigar Stoop made a play for the girl yet?”

Raina couldn’t stop her eyes from widening.

“You needn’t look so pelt-shorn, Raina Blackhail. Why d’you think they drove me to this mud bucket in the first place?”

“I . . . well . . .”

“Aye. I’m either a madman or a witch. Possibly both.” Mad Binny slammed the malt flask onto the table, flattening a fly. “I’ll tell you this, Raina, that girl can’t stay in Blackhail. And if you don’t know that you’re a fool.”

Raina nodded, still reeling from the turn of the conversation. “I’m planning to move her to Dregg.”

“When?”

“When her brother returns. She won’t leave without seeing him.”

Mad Binny raised the malt flask and studied the squashed fly. “Well, she’ll be leaving soon, then, since Drey Sevrance is on his way here this night.”

Raina felt a rush of pleasure and relief, then told herself she was a fool. “You’re making it up.”

“Am I, now? Well, we’ll see about that. In the meantime I’m going to tell you what you should do with that child, and you’re going to sit there and listen.” Mad Binny spoke with the calmness of one who had seldom been contradicted. Raina supposed it was a benefit of living by oneself.

“Effie Sevrance should be delivered to the cloister at Owl’s Reach. It’s in the mountains, east of Hound’s Mire—the locals can tell you where. They teach the old lores: herb and animal, far seeing and far speech, summonings and compulsions and other ancient magics. She has the quickness for it, and I need not tell you she has the power. The sisters there will value her, and she’ll grow to become one of them, accepted for what she is.”

Raina stood. She was sick of people telling her what to do about Effie. This was a child they spoke of, not some dangerous animal that must be either trained or caged. “I’m not sending Effie to a place full of strangers who are not clan. Who will love her? Not some cold-eyed sorceress who seeks to control her. No. Dregg will be good for her. I was only a year older than she is now when I was fostered from my birth clan; it will be no different for her. She’ll make friends, and all this sorcery nonsense will be forgotten.” In her agitation, Raina knocked over her cup.

Mad Binny caught it before it rolled to the floor. “It’s a pity to see a woman as clever as you fool herself. Look at me. Thirty years alone here. Would you want the same for the child?”

No, Raina would not. The two women looked at each other, the older one calm, the younger one shaking. Raina almost knew what Mad Binny would say next, and she did not want to hear it.

“Dregg is a young clan,” Mad Binny said quietly. “Its warriors are fierce and they wield the heavy swords with the broad blades. Its women are held to be passing fair, and dress in bright cloths they weave with their own hands. It’s said their chief is a good man, and their roundhouse is well set and well built. All this is known, yet clan is still clan. Tell me, when was the last time you were there, Raina? Ten years ago? Twenty?” The spinster’s green eyes were knowing and there might have been pity in them. “Do you really think they will treat Effie any differently than Blackhail once they know the power of her lore?”

Raina made a small gesture with her hand, pushing the words away.
It will be better for her at Dregg
, she told herself.
There’s no Mace Blackhail there.
Yet the thought gave her little comfort, and she found her mind returning to the morning after Effie had fled. In her haste to escape the roundhouse, the girl had dropped the bowl of liquid she had used to threaten the men. It had landed on the great court, just outside the clan door. Effie had since told Raina that the black liquid was nothing more than charcoal mixed with malt liquor, and Raina believed her . . . yet it had burned the stone clean through.

Raina shivered. She was afraid, and she had run out of words to argue with this woman. When Effie’s voice came from outside she was relieved.

“Drey! Raina, it’s Drey!”

Mad Binny had the decency to look only slightly triumphant.

Raina Blackhail left her and went outside to greet Drey.

TEN

Condemned Men

P
enthero Iss stood on a stone platform cushioned with silk and horse hides, waiting to sentence a grangelord death. The man was charged with high treason, and so rightly the trial and the execution should have been held within Mask Fortress, and the man’s head laid upon the obsidian block known as Traitor’s Doom. But Iss, Surlord of Spire Vanis, Lord Commander of the Rive Watch, Keeper of Mask Fortress and Master of the Four Gates, had thought to assemble a larger crowd. You could only fit so many bystanders into the quad. Whereas the Quarter Square spread out before Iss, with its circle of gibbets know as the Dreading Ring, its baiting pits, statue garden, market stalls, cattle folds, gaming courts and slave blocks, could accommodate half a city.

And today it nearly did. Even though the sky was steel gray and a high wind was blowing off Mount Slain, the city had come out in force. Thousands of merchants, apprentices, laborers, prostitutes, priests, pot boys, mercenaries and lords milled around in the great expanse of the square, growing restless. They had eaten from the cook stalls, gamed at dice and sticks, drunk beer and strong white liquor, inspected the corpses strung high on the gibbets, watched the spectacle of a hundred grangelords assembling on the steps of the Quarter Court, and now they were ready for blood.

Iss sympathized with them. John Rullion, the High Examiner, was reading a list of the charges, and the man’s dour and powerful voice rose high above the noise of the wind. “Maskill Boice, Lord of the Hunted Granges, and Master of the River Crossing at Stye, you are here today charged with high treason against the lord of this city and its people. Knowingly you met with others at the Dog’s Head in Almstown, and knowingly you plotted to assassinate the surlord on the last day of Mourns as he made his progress through the city, bequeathing alms. Seventeen days later you made contract with Black Dan, master bowman of Ille Glaive, and paid him ten gold rods for his service. Furthermore, on the same day you reached agreement with the coarsehouse bawd Hester Fay, otherwise known as Big Hetty, thereby allowing Black Dan use of her three-storeyed house on the Spireway, which overlooks the surlord’s progress, in return for a payment of six silver spoons. How say you?”

The crowd stilled, restless and ready for anger. Corpses on the gibbets swung wildly in the rising wind as the throng waited to hear what the accused man would say.

Maskill Boice stood at the foot of the Quarter Court, an iron collar around his neck that ran chains down to his wrists and ankles and forced him to keep his head up. Boice was a big man turned fleshy, with the high color of one who drank too much and the contemptuous sneer of a grangelord. He had been held in custody for the customary twelve days, and Iss had made sure the man was well treated, even going so far as to have Caydis Zerbina deliver cooked pheasants, fortified wines and hothouse plums to his cell. Caydis had also seen to his attire, ensuring that of all the grangelord’s considerable wardrobe, it was the richest, finest cloths he wore today. Rubies glittered on the grangelord’s doublet, and the unmistakable opulence of ocelot could be seen lining his cloak.

It was an interesting picture he made, standing there below his fellow grangelords. There could be no denying Maskill Boice was one of them, with his riches and arrogance displayed for all to see. Indeed, if it weren’t for the matter of his chains he might simply have mounted the steps and taken his place amongst them. And Penthero Iss sincerely doubted that this irony went unnoticed by the crowd. They knew a rich lordling when they saw one.

By contrast, Iss was dressed moderately, his robe of swans-down a stark gray trimmed with executioner’s black. At his back Marafice Eye was cloaked in maroon leathers that had seen battle and hard travel in their day.

The Commander General of the Rive Watch had brought his men out in force for the trial, and the deep red of their forge cloaks could be seen in numbers, patrolling the crowd. Iss was gratified by their presence. The population of the city had swelled these past months, taking in mercenary companies, men-at-arms, knights, footmen, sappers, engineers, armorers, and every farmer’s son within five hundred leagues who thought to make his fortune seizing battle trove rather than sowing grain.

Marafice Eye was doing as he had promised at midwinter: raising an army to invade the clanholds in late spring.

Iss was well pleased with what his Knife had accomplished so far. Camps had been established to the north of the city: makeshift towns where men lived under canvas and spoiled the neighboring fields. Training was under way, with large groups of men-at-arms being drilled in how to fight in formation with shields and spears, and raids for provisions and arms had been mounted as far east as the Hound’s Wall. Still, there was danger in having so many free lances in the city. Danger also in those hundred grangelords assembled in costly splendor upon the Quarter Court’s limestone steps. And a wise man could see further danger in Marafice Eye and his red cloaks.

All in all, Spire Vanis was a hazardous place to be in.

And for no one was that more true than for Maskill Boice.

The accused man looked defiant, rattling his chains as he declared himself innocent of the charges. Iss felt Boice’s gaze come to rest upon him, challenging him to meet his eye, but Iss was not about to engage in such theatrics. It was time to move the proceedings along. He nodded once to John Rullion.

“Bring forth the witnesses,” ordered the High Examiner in response. Rullion was a hard man, not gently born, and he bore no love for the grangelords. His arrogance came from his belief in the One God, and although he had been High Examiner since the time of Borhis Horgo and had amassed vast wealth over the past thirty years, he still dressed like a priest.