Ravens Shadow 02 - Tower Lord (10 page)

“Yes, Highness. Sleep well.”

◆ ◆ ◆

Sleep well. Any sleep would have been welcome, troubled, dream-filled, fitful, she didn’t care. Any release from this restless squirming in her cage of furs as she stared at the weave of the canvas over her head. A stiff northerly wind was ruffling the tent walls, making them snap and thrum in a most aggravating manner. But it wasn’t this that kept her from sleep, nor had it been for the past five years.
Every night!
she raged.
Even here in this chilled waste, after so many miles on that blasted horse.

It was always the same, every night she would lie abed waiting for sleep, but it wouldn’t come, not until she had spent most of the night hours awash in memory and sheer exhaustion dragged her mind into slumber. Despite the nightly trial she never sought out a healer for a sleeping draught, never partook of wine to excess or dulled her senses with redflower. She hated it, this torment, but she accepted it. It was her due after all.

The memory became clearer when her mind had lost enough sensation of the world beyond her body to give its vision clarity, but not enough to bring the gift of sleep.
The old man in the bed, so old, so sunken into age and regret, barely recognisable as her father, barely believable as a king.

She stood in the doorway to his bedchamber, a scroll clutched in her hand, the seal broken. The Alpiran Emperor had done them the courtesy of having it penned in Realm Tongue. The old man’s eyes tracked from her face to the scroll. He waved an irritated hand at the physicians surrounding the bed, a harsh bark coming from his throat, louder than she would have thought him capable. The physicians fled.

The old man’s skeletal claw beckoned to her and she came forward to kneel at his bedside. The voice that came from his throat was a dry rasp, but quick, the words clear. “So that’s it, is it?”

Lyrna placed the scroll on the bed. “Would you like me to read it?”

“Caahh!” he snarled, hand twitching. “Know what it says. No point. They want the boy. They want the Hope Killer.”

She looked down at the scroll, the neat precise text, beautifully scribed. “Yes, in return for Malcius. He’s alive, Father.”

“’Course he is, curses never die.”

Lyrna closed her eyes tight. “Father, please . . .”

“That’s all? Just the boy?”

“His men can leave. They ask for no reparations, no tribute. Just him.”

There was no sound save for the old man’s laboured breathing, like a dry rope dragged through an ungreased block. Lyrna looked up, meeting his eyes, fierce and bright enough to tell her he was still in there, still scheming away in his prison of age and illness. “No,” he said.

“Father, I beg you . . .”

“No!” The shout brought a fit of coughing, doubling him over in the bed. He was so thin and wasted she feared he might snap.

“Father . . .” She tried to ease him back onto the pillow but he shrugged her off.

“You tell them no, daughter!” His eyes blazed at her, blood staining his lips and chin as he drew air into his lungs in painful gulps. “I did not do all this . . . to be thwarted now. You will send the Alpiran ambassador home . . . with a refusal and a statement of our rightful claim to the ports . . . Then you will send the remaining fleet . . . to Linesh with orders for Al Sorna to embark himself and his army . . . They are to return to the Realm with all dispatch . . . When I die, as I surely must before long . . . You will wed him as consort and ascend to the throne . . .”

“My brother . . .”

“Your brother is a waste of my blood!” He thrashed at her, lunging across the bed. “Do you think I have worked . . . for all these years to bequeath my Realm . . . to a fool who’ll see it in ruins within a decade!” The cough took him again, wracking him, blood misting the bedcovers. Lyrna turned to call for the physicians but his claw-hand snared her wrist. For all his age and infirmity he still had a warrior’s grip. “The war, Lyrna . . .” he said, fierce eyes softer now, imploring, “. . . the Realm Guard shattered, the treasury emptied . . . All for you to make it right, rebuild, be the saviour of this Realm. All for you . . .”

Revulsion engulfed her then, making her flesh burn where he touched her. She tore her wrist away, retreating as he continued to beg, blood now streaming from his mouth. “Please, Lyrna . . . all for you.”

She stood in silence as he raged and flailed, until it seemed all the blood in him had stained the bedclothes and he lay spent and twitching, no more words coming from his hateful mouth. She swallowed, waited until his eyes were closed, until his chest had slowed to little more than a tremor. “Good sirs!” she called, making her voice as shrill with alarm as she could. “Good sirs, the King!”

The physicians returned in a flurry of robes and panic, flocking around the bed like crows around a perished horse. “Do all you can, good sirs!” she implored them. After another half hour of fussing one of the physicians came forward and bowed.

“Sir?” she enquired, tears streaming from her eyes.

“Highness, he has slipped into the final sleep. He will be with the Departed before the sun rises.” He sank to one knee before her, the others following suit.

She closed her eyes, letting the final tear fall, knowing it would be the last she would ever shed for her father. “Thank you, sir. Please see to his comfort.”

She retrieved the scroll and walked from the chamber. The Alpiran ambassador was seated where she had left him, on a bench in the main courtyard. It was a full moon and the marble paving stones were painted a pale blue, the pillars casting deep shadows.

“My lord Velsus,” she greeted him.

Lord Velsus, a tall black-skinned man in a simple robe of blue and white, returned the bow. “Highness. What word from your father?”

She clutched the scroll tight, feeling the parchment crack, ruining the fine calligraphy it held. “King Janus Al Nieren finds your proposal acceptable.”

She knew she was dreaming now, the blue of the moonlight too bright, Lord Velsus’s eyes too mocking as he bowed, then lunged forward to clamp his hand over her mouth . . .

She jerked awake, the shout stifled by the hand trapping her lips against her teeth. Davoka’s eyes were directly above hers, reflecting the bright gleam of the knife in her hand.

“Y
ou are a free man of little property and I am your recently acquired wife. We are travelling to the Alpiran border where you have secured employment as an apprentice slave breeder.” The woman had donned grey clothing of more loosely woven cloth than her previous attire, instructing Frentis to dress himself in similarly mean garb. “We have no children. My mother warned me against you but I didn’t listen. If this latest venture of yours is a failure, I’ll be seeking a decree of annulment, you mark my words.” She shook a finger at him with a shrewish scowl.

They were in her courtyard where a pony and cart had appeared that morning. Horvek had shown her the hidden panel above the axle where a variety of weapons and poisons were concealed. She inspected each dagger, short sword and vial before nodding in satisfaction. “It may be another year before my next visit,” she told the Kuritai as she climbed onto the cart. “Be sure to see the general is well cared for.”

“I shall, Mistress.”

“Let’s be off then, you worthless little man,” she told Frentis with a laugh. “I think I might enjoy this role.”

Frentis took the pony’s reins and walked ahead, guiding them from the courtyard and into the square. A group of slaves were busy cleaning the statue of the man on the horse, the woman’s gaze lingering on the great bronze until they turned a corner and made for the southern gate. “You want to know, don’t you?” she called to him as he tugged the pony onward through the throng. “About the man on the horse.”

He glanced at her over his shoulder but said nothing. She had an uncanny ability to read his unspoken moods, though he strove to keep any sign of curiosity or puzzlement from his face. “Don’t worry,” she assured him. “It’s a long story but I don’t mind the telling. It’ll have to wait till we’re on the road though.”

The journey to the gate took an age of forcing their way through the bustle, the streets of Mirtesk were thick with slaves and free men all seemingly intent on getting to wherever they were going with as much inconvenience to others as possible.

“Out the way, you beggar!” a fat grey-clad shouted at Frentis, trying to force his way past, aiming a cuff at the nose of their pony. There was a momentary loosening of the binding and Frentis kneed the fat man in the groin, leaving him gasping on the cobbled street.

“I do so hate the ill-mannered,” he heard the woman say.

A few streets on his attention was captured by an odd scene. A man stood outside a well-appointed house dressed in the threadbare garb of a slave. He was perhaps forty years old and stood with his head bowed, a placard hung about his neck bearing a single word. Behind him slaves were carrying furniture and ornaments from the house under the eye of an overseer whilst a woman and two children sat and watched from the small courtyard. Frentis was struck by the glances of sheer hatred the woman directed at the man with the placard, matched by the glare of the elder child, a boy of about fifteen. As they trundled past Frentis saw the overseer hand the woman a scroll as one of his slaves fastened a chain with a heavy lock on the door. He picked up the word “annulment” amongst the babble before the scene was lost from view.

“A man with debts he can’t pay,” the woman said from the cart. “Deserves neither family, home nor freedom.”

They had to pay a gate toll of three circles to exit the city and another one to use the road. Frentis was finding the Volarians were very fond of tolls, although he had to admit the road was worth the price; a smooth-surfaced highway of close-packed bricks broad enough to accommodate two heavy wagons side by side, stretching off into the gathering haze. There were no roads in the Realm to match it and he marvelled at the speed with which an army could move along such a route.

“Impressive isn’t it?” the woman commented, once again reading his mood with maddening ease. “Built by the man on the horse, nearly three centuries ago.”

Frentis resisted the urge to glance back at her, although he did want to know more. “Savarek Avantir was his name,” she went on as they continued through the neatly ordered orange groves bordering the road on both sides. “Council-man and general, conqueror of the southern provinces and perhaps the greatest military mind the empire, or even the world has known. But even he knew defeat, husband dear. Like your mad king, he found himself humbled by the Alpirans. For ten years he fought to secure the final province, the last corner of this continent not in our hands. And for ten years the Alpirans spilled an ocean of blood to stop him. Defeat after defeat they suffered, army after army shattered by Avantir’s genius, but they always sent more. Numbers are their strength, not their pitiful, imaginary gods. It was a painful lesson to learn, one which in truth drove Avantir to insanity and the assassin’s blade when his demands for ever more men made the Council worry if their great military genius was in fact something of a liability. It’s always the way with great men, they can’t see the knives of those who live in their shadow.”

She fell to silence and said no more until evening. They made camp at a rest stop some thirty miles south of Mirtesk where she fell into her role of nagging wife with effortless aplomb, scolding him about the camp as she cooked their meal, demanding more firewood in between lecturing him on his obvious failings as a husband, drawing amused glances or looks of sympathy from the other free travellers. The slaves, of course, went about their chores with eyes averted and faces void of any expression.

“Eat it then, you ungrateful cur,” she said, handing him a bowl of goat stew.

His first mouthful convinced him that the woman’s skill with a blade was not matched by her ability with the stewpot. He forced it down, his years in the Order having left him with a stomach capable of accepting the most unappetising fare.

The woman kept up the charade until the sky grew dark and the other travellers had retired to their tents. “You’re wondering about my connection to him,” she said. Frentis sat unmoving on the far side of their fire, saying nothing.

The woman gave a small smile. “An illustrious forebear perhaps? My great-great-great-grandfather?” Her smile faded. “No. He was my father, dear husband. I am the last of the Avantir line, though I no longer have need of that name, or any other.”

She’s lying,
he decided.
Playing some trick.
She liked to toy with him, as she had proved when she forced him to share her bath the first night in her house, pressing herself against him, hands reaching beneath the water, stroking, her lips soft against his ear, whispering,
I can make you . . .
He closed his eyes against the memory and the shame of his body’s betrayal.

“It’s true, I assure you,” she said. “Though I don’t expect you to believe it, mired as you are in your superstitions. But you will, dearest.” She leaned forward, eyes intent. “Before our journey is done you’ll have seen enough to make my story seem a dull tale indeed.” She smiled again and rose, moving to the half tent he had secured against the side of the cart. “Time for your husbandly duties, dearest,” she said, disappearing into the shadowed interior of the tent. He sat by the fire until she flared the binding with enough agony to make him follow.

◆ ◆ ◆

They travelled the road for another ten days, orange and lemon groves gradually giving way to ever-thicker forest of unfamiliar trees, growing in height the further south they went. The heat deepened as well, baking the road and making each day a trial of sweaty trudging in front of the cart. He didn’t like this forest, it smelt like rot, birthed a million troublesome bugs and made a din like a madhouse in the night hours.

“It’s called a jungle,” the woman told him. “I expect they don’t have them in your land.”

The tenth night saw him staring into the jungle, his hand itching for a sword as something large crashed about in the trees, occasionally giving off a deafening crack that could only be a tree snapping in two.

“Ah, so there are still some left this far north,” the woman said in mild surprise. “Come on, dearest.” Her will tugged him along as she walked into the jungle. “It’s a rare sight, one you’ll cherish.”

His eyes darted about as he followed, searching the blackness for unimaginable horrors. Fear was an old friend, but terror was a stranger. “Look.” The woman came to a halt, crouching and pointing. The only light came from the half-moon above the tree canopy, painting the jungle floor a faint blue. It took him some time to fathom what he was seeing, the size and oddness of the thing defeating his comprehension. The beast stood at least ten feet tall, covered in long shaggy fur from tip to tail, moving about on great elongated limbs tipped with vicious-looking hooks. Its head was long and tubular, the narrow mouth giving off a faint hoot as it tore down a sapling, the crack echoing through the jungle.

“He’s an old one,” the woman said. “Probably been haunting this jungle longer than you’ve been alive, dearest.”

What’s it called?
he wanted to ask, but didn’t. As ever she didn’t need to hear him say it. “The great sloth. It’s not dangerous, provided you don’t get too close. Only eats tree bark.”

The beast stopped suddenly, a strip of bark hanging from its mouth, two black eyes staring straight at them. It gave a low, sombre hoot and turned, lumbering away into the depths of the jungle on its impossible limbs.

“I doubt I’ll see another,” the woman commented as they returned to the road. “Every year the jungle grows smaller and the roads grow longer. Oh well.” She settled onto her bedroll. “Perhaps we’ll see a tiger tomorrow.”

◆ ◆ ◆

The next day brought them to the great river forming the border with Alpiran territory where a small town of stilted structures waited on the near shore. The river was nearly a mile wide but unlike the lake crossing to Mirtesk, there was no ferry to be seen here. The stilt-town was a series of interlinked platforms at the end of a long jetty, dwellings clustered on each, uniform only in their ramshackle construction. A slave market was in full swing on the largest platform, the overseer’s voice a constant chorus of barely intelligible jargon as he took bids from the audience, mostly grey-clads, although a few black robes were also present, sweating in the sun as their slaves wafted stale air over them with palm leaves.

“Lot seventy-three!” the overseer called as a naked girl was dragged onto the platform by a brawny Varitai. Frentis judged her to be no more than thirteen years old. “Fresh from the Twelve Sisters. No skills, no Volarian. Too plain for the pleasure house but trainable as a house-slave or breeding stock. Four circles to start.”

Frentis felt his binding flare as he watched the girl stand trembling and weeping on the platform, a stream of urine covering her thigh. “Now, now, dearest,” the woman said, clasping his hand, the loving wife replacing the scolding nag. She leaned close to plant a kiss on his cheek, whispering, “Your heroic days are gone. But, if you want to spare this one all that awaits her, I’ll buy her and you can kill her. Would you like that?”

It was no empty threat, he knew. She meant to do it, possibly even in kindness rather than cruelty. He was beginning to suspect she barely understood the difference between the two. He shook his head, trembling.

“As you wish.”

The girl went for two squares and a circle. She began to scream as they dragged her away, choking into silence as an overseer clamped a gag in her mouth.

“Lot seventy-four,” the overseer on the platform intoned as a stocky, broad-shouldered man was brought forward, his back striped red with fresh whip-strokes. “Onetime pirate, this one. From some islands in the north. Speaks Alpiran but no Volarian. Bit too spirited for the fields but will make a good show in the spectacles or fetch a decent price if you care to take him to the pits. Six circles to start.”

“Come along,” the woman said, leading him away from the auction. “I think this is making you a little too nostalgic.”

They found a merchant on one of the smaller platforms who took the cart and pony in exchange for two squares. Frentis secured the contents of the hidden compartment in his pack and they made their way to a boardinghouse, renting a room at an exorbitant rate. “Slavers in town,” the owner said, spreading his hands. “Should’ve come tomorrow, citizens.”

“I told you, dullard!” the woman snarled at Frentis. “Oh why did I shun my mother’s wisdom?”

“This is on the house though, citizen,” the owner said, handing Frentis a bottle with an understanding wink. “Might help the night go quicker, eh?”

They waited in their small room until nightfall. This unnamed stilt-town falling to silence as the slavers took their purchases to the road and their various fates.

“You don’t have slaves in your realm, do you?” the woman asked.

He stared out of the window at the broad, fast-flowing river and said nothing.

“No, you’re all free,” she went on. “But still slaves to your various superstitions, of course. Something we divested ourselves of centuries ago. Tell me, do you really think you’re going to live forever in some paradise with your dead relatives when you die?”