The Hidden Queen (16 page)

The injustice burned him all the more because he knew Sif was a matter of a few rooms away, all the while unaware, perhaps, of the truth of things. All right, so it had gone badly; but surely he could not blame Ansen for that? It looked as though they hadn’t found Anghara, somehow she had managed to get away. But if it hadn’t been for Ansen, Sif wouldn’t have known where to look for his vanished half-sister in the first place. Surely, once he’d had a chance to cool down and think about it, he would send someone for Ansen, to talk to him, perhaps to ask him if he had any idea where she might have gone. Ansen sat bolt upright in the room’s only chair for hours, clutching its arms, waiting for the sound of approaching footsteps—someone coming, at the king’s command, to set him free.

No one came.

Sleep eventually overcame him and he slept where he sat, slumped uncomfortably in the rigid-backed chair, his hands slipping off its rough arms to dangle limply just above the rush-strewn floor.

It was, in the end, the sound of the key in the lock which roused Ansen. The cold light of early morning was seeping through the closed shutters, and at last somebody was at the door which stood between him and Sif’s approbation. They had come for him. Ansen still believed with unshakeable faith that Sif had sent for him at last. He straightened his aching back with a soft groan, rubbing life back into his stiff shoulders; his muscles were tight and strained, his clothes rumpled, and, he thought as he rubbed a hand ruefully over his chin, it seemed as though he needed a shave. They simply had to let him have a few moments to make himself presentable for the king, he could hardly be expected to go into Sif’s presence looking as he did.

“By your leave,” he began, even as the door began opening, wincing as he stood on a foot where a fierce tingling was only now beginning to restore life to a limb numbed by a night’s uncomfortable sleep, “I would appreciate a few moments to make myself a little more…”

The captain in the doorway, the same one who had escorted him here the previous night, stood watching him in silence, and the pity in his eyes stilled Ansen’s words. Ansen swallowed convulsively.

“What is the king’s will?” he managed to ask at last, through a throat tight with incipient panic.

“Eh, lad,” said the captain, his voice oddly gentle. “Many died yesterday at his order. He was inured to death.” He shook his head. “It was an ill fate that sent you to him yesterday, lad. I am sorry.”

“What…what did he…”

“We leave for Miranei in a few hours,” said the captain, his voice changing to the official tone, brisk and abrupt.

“We leave…” echoed Ansen, color flooding into his face at this restoration of hope.

The captain shook his head. “Nay, not you, lad. You’ll be staying behind. You’ll not be leaving this place again.”

The color, quickly risen into Ansen’s cheeks, fled just as quickly, leaving him white with shock. He was only just beginning to understand the depths of his folly. Swaying, he reached out behind him blindly and sagged very slowly back into his chair.

“You’re to be hanged this morning,” said the captain abruptly. He was all soldier now; his eyes veiled. Not for him to question his master’s word. “Come with me.”

“But…but…now? Right now?”

The captain nodded.

Ansen fought the urge to howl like a child. Inured to death…what had Sif been doing up at Castle Bresse? Just what had Ansen unleashed?

“Do you want a moment?” asked the captain, after a pause. The pity was back in his face. His thoughts were mirrored in his eyes.
He’s so young…it’s too cruel to tell a man he’s to die just as he wakes from a night’s sleep…and this one…he’s just a boy…what could he have done that Sif destroys him this easily?

Ansen could only nod, mute. The captain withdrew, shutting the door behind him. Ansen heard the lock snick home.

When they led him out, he walked with his back straight and his head held high, but his face was that of a boy being punished for a misdeed of which he has no knowledge. He raked the han anxiously with his good eye, hoping to see Sif somewhere, that the king’s presence would lend dignity and pride to at least his death if not his life—but even this was denied him. The only witnesses, it seemed, were a kitchen maid who watched him pass with her eyes suddenly brimming with tears and the few soldiers who were the execution detail. They did not ask if he had a last request. He died early that morning, in silence—it seemed, in vain—just as the sun was beginning to pour itself upon the waters of the nearby river.

Perhaps the burden would have been lighter if he had known that Sif had indeed watched him walk to the tree, from one of whose sturdy branches they had hung the rope. Watched him walk every one of his last steps, and watched him raise his face to the sky only just beginning to be gilded by dawn.

“What was he, lord?” one of his captains asked as Sif turned away from the window.

“Nothing,” he said abruptly.

Nothing, and yet everything. This was the death that paid for all the other deaths, the throttling of the snake which had poured the first poison. It was Ansen of Cascin who had set Sif on this path—his feet were now too firmly on it for him to turn back. But Ansen’s death was almost an act of expiation for what he had done. It did not work—entirely. Sif would always be haunted by his actions at Bresse; Morgan had been right when she said the Sisters could not grant absolution. But Ansen was, in a strange way, a personification of the guilt Sif would never acknowledge again—would never think of without adding, silently,
I did what had to be done.
Killing Ansen was killing the guilt. What Sif felt when his eyes slid away from Ansen’s dead body dangling from its tree was not the burden of another death upon his conscience, but a sense of peace.

The king’s men rode away within the hour. The han was quiet for a brief while, and then life returned, like water pouring through a breached dyke. The gossip eddied in the common room, batted from one man to the next, wild stories growing wilder with every retelling; the king’s visit soon assumed the status of a legend from another time. Now and then someone would glance outside where the body of the strange one-eyed young man had been taken down that morning, or fall silent remembering briefly the smoldering remains of Castle Bresse. But already the whole thing was almost a dream; when a slightly built young girl with dark circles under her gray eyes passed through like a shadow, most people paid her no mind, and nobody thought of her as someone who had lived the horrors and bore its tracks. She passed by, and was gone, into oblivion. Country life shook itself free of tragedy like a wet dog shedding water, and took up where it had left off.

Feor recovered slowly from his fever; when he felt strong enough to rise from his bed he made the short journey to where Castle Bresse had stood. It was almost enough to kill him. Not the journey itself—he weathered that well, with the miller’s youngest son and a placid gray donkey along to help. But the blackened ruin that was Bresse was imbued with such a potent power that Feor came close to succumbing. Only the vivid life force of the boy and the tranquil living warmth of the donkey against which he leaned prevented him from accepting freely the death which hung around the Castle. For those who could hear, Morgan had left a message no edict of Sif’s could ever erase:
We died here, the Sisterhood of Bresse, for the sin of Sight.

“Are you all right, Master?” the miller’s boy asked him with a careful, self-effacing wariness; there was something profoundly unnerving about this old man.

The youthful voice, waking echoes of other young voices which had crowded his schoolrooms over the years, made Feor draw back from the brink. He opened his eyes and managed to smile at the boy. “I will be,” he said. “Will you take the donkey and wait for me, there in those trees? I need to be alone for a moment.”

The boy did as he was told, with considerable alacrity.

Feor cast his mind into Sight, groping for trace of Anghara. If she had died here…but there was nothing of her, nothing except…very soft…beneath the words of Morgan’s epitaph…
We died here, the Sisterhood of Bresse, for the sin of Sight…The young queen lives.

The young queen lives.

Hope woke in Feor’s breast. Perhaps March had managed a miracle and Anghara was safe somewhere, in hiding again, waiting.

He hobbled back down the hillside to where he had sent the boy; he found him pale and shivering outside the trees, keeping the body of the donkey between himself and the copse.

“What is it?” asked Feor, disturbed by the boy’s face.

“There’s a dead man in there,” the miller’s son said.

“Wait here,” Feor said, picking up the skirts of his robe and turning to enter the copse. The thorns of a black premonition had already begun to prick the bright bloom of his hope.

The body was several days dead, buried cursorily under a shallow layer of soil beneath one of the trees. A hand en crusted with the black scab of dried blood had slipped free of concealment, with a strange pale band around one finger where a ring might once have lain. Feor knew the vanished ring: a signet bestowed by a queen of Roisinan on a faithful knight. Anghara might have escaped, but March was not with her. She was alive, but she was alone.

“Ask your father to have someone bury him decently,” Feor said quietly to the boy when he came out of the copse. “He was a brave man.”

He left the village that very day. The owner of the boat he took down the Rada toward Halas Han could have told him of a quiet girl who had asked for passage down-river only days before, a girl whom he had been obliged to point to another southbound boat leaving sooner than his own. But Feor did not ask, and the boatman had long ceased to give the solitary girl a second thought.

The first rumor that Cascin might have been razed to the ground reached Feor as he disembarked on the pier at Halas Han. It was immediately contradicted by another, quite at odds with the first, and then he heard a third, differing from both. It was obvious people didn’t know what had happened at Cascin, and were loath to go and find out for fear of what they would discover. Someone recognized Feor as belonging to the Cascin household, and ventured to ask the truth of him. Feor told the questioner, rather more brusquely than he intended, that as far as he knew Cascin stood and lived as always; but the brusqueness was born of fear. He did not tarry at Halas Han, as he had planned, to rest bones which had suddenly grown old over the past week, but saddled his horse and rode at once toward the manor.

The house was ominously quiet as he approached it. Nothing stirred in the stables or the kitchen yard. The mansion itself was whole and unharmed, but it had an odd, derelict air, as though it had been abandoned for years.

Feor dismounted and crossed to the kitchen door, giving it a desultory push he did not expect to yield much reward. To his surprise, the door gave, and he stepped inside. The kitchen was clean, but cold and empty, with no fire on the cooking hearth, no stirring of steaming pots or bustle in the scullery. His heart like lead, he passed through and into the house proper. It had the echoing air of a mausoleum. There was dust on the usually gleaming wooden banisters. A striped cat usually confined to the kitchens darted warily across the hall into the dining chamber and seemed to be the only life stirring in this place.

“Sif,” murmured Feor through bloodless lips, “Sif, what have you done?”

He turned on his heel, suddenly acutely aware of his solitude and aching to get to his horse again, to try and track down, if they were still alive, the family who once laughed and loved and lived in this place.

A tall youth wearing bright armor stood squarely in the arched doorway leading through to the kitchens, filling it with his presence, barring Feor’s way.

His first stab of panic was replaced, almost instantly, by a rush of recognition and relief. Feor clutched at the banister of the main staircase for support, closing his eyes.

“Kieran! By all the Gods, Kieran!”

Kieran pushed back the cap of mail covering his head, releasing his familiar dark hair, and crossed the hall in two long strides to offer a strong arm in support. He noticed with some surprise that he was of a height, perhaps even marginally the taller, with Feor, whom he had always thought to be so tall. Feor clutched at his arm with long bony fingers which suddenly belonged on the hand of an old man.

“I was never so grateful to see a face in my life,” said Feor. “Do you know what happened…”

“They are fine. The family is fine,” Kieran hastened to reassure his old tutor, painfully aware of the naked need in a face which had always been so firmly controlled. “They fled when Sif’s soldiers came, but they are all right. Adamo says the soldiers came to burn the house; he isn’t sure what made them change their minds. They took the horses with them when they left, and killed most of the dogs. They aren’t likely to come back, but Lord Lyme doesn’t think it’s safe to return just yet, and I agree. Where Ansen is, I don’t know; nobody will speak of him.”

“He went to Sif,” said Feor. “I fear he may have met with a reception that was far from the one he imagined.”

Kieran hesitated. “Is he…”

“He lost the eye,” said Feor curtly. “And he went to Sif to exact a kind of revenge. He thought he might have the coin to buy Sif’s favor—news of Anghara.”

Kieran’s fingers tightened on Feor’s arm. “Is she all right?”

“She’s alive,” said Feor tiredly. “It’s all I know.”

“Where is she?”

Feor met Kieran’s troubled eyes with a steady gaze. “I am too old a hunter,” he said. “She’s lost in the wilderness, in exile in her own land. She has been to the brink of death and survived, but Sif will not rest until he has taken her. You are all I can wield against the king, Kieran. You are the hawk I will loose to search for her.”

T
he only rumor which reached Anghara’s ears when she had passed through Halas Han on her way down-river was that Cascin no longer existed. Both her visions of the fall of Bresse and the sparing of Cascin had been equally vivid; one had come to pass almost exactly as she had seen it happen in her mind. There was no reason not to trust the other. Cascin must be standing, and safe. But she paused a moment and cast a longing glance up the road which led across the bridge of Halas Han toward the house where she had spent what now seemed the golden days of her childhood. Even if Cascin was as it had always been, it was the one place Anghara could not go. Sif knew everything. He knew all about Cascin. It was no longer sanctuary—and, worse, it was entirely possible that even if it had been spared so far, Sif might decide to destroy it as he had Castle Bresse, for the simple reason of having given her safe haven. No, Morgan had been right. Her only chance was to seek Sanctuary with Nual, at least for another year or two. There was little a girl of fourteen could do to stand against a crowned king with loyal armies.

But Nual was a small God. There were temples to Kerun in nearly every village; and most people could find a Tower of Avanna somewhere within a day’s ride of their home. Nual’s Sanctuaries were scattered and few, and always on or near water. Anghara knew of only three. One was on the Mabin Islands, south of the Tath border, too far away to be of any practical use, even if it wasn’t in what was technically enemy territory. Another was in Shaymir, near the source of the River Shay which fed their great lake. It could have been a good choice, if Anghara hadn’t fled south and, more to the point, if she didn’t have to creep almost under the shadow of Miranei to reach the Brandar Pass, which would itself doubtless be under guard. The alternative was making for the eastern passage and then having to face the length of the barren Shaymir plains or trying to trek through the mountains. Without friends or supplies such a venture would be doomed from the start. That left the third, on the promontory beyond the port of Calabra. It was a long way from Halas Han, just like the others, but it had the distinct advantage that it could be reached simply by keeping to the River Tanassa. All Anghara had to do was keep a low profile and catch the right river boats.

She boarded the first one at dawn of her second morning at the han. She had no way of knowing that Kieran, who had arrived late the previous evening, was asleep in a room in another wing, almost close enough for him to hear if she called his name. Feor was already on the river and due to arrive at the han the next day. Morgan had sent her off with a tidy sum of money which would be sufficient to keep her for a short while, as well as a little set of pipes she had been learning how to play. She would never be Keda, but her small talent at the pipes, together with the blessing of a good, clear soprano might prove a help in securing an occasional meal or lodgings until she could reach sanctuary. She was a vagabond queen, after all; it was not entirely inappropriate for her to sing for her supper. But she did not much feel like making music in the first few days after Bresse, and the boatman at Halas Han seemed content enough with her coin.

He did not go far, merely until the first landing in Bodmer Forest, where several stewards of forest holdings waited to pick up cargo bespoken from Halas Han. Anghara disembarked together with the bales, ignored by nearly everybody; she was the only thing left unclaimed on the pier when everyone had loaded their consignments onto carts and traps and trundled away on narrow forest roads. The home of the man who plied the ferry across the river and doubled as landing overseer could not be called a han, by any stretch of the imagination. But the ferryman’s wife served a hot stew for which she would accept no payment and, seeing as there would be no boat down-river until the next day, allowed Anghara a small pallet by the hearth. She was a quiet woman, who did not ask where this strange solitary girl was going; but she did come out the next morning, wrapped in her faded shawl, and watched as Anghara boarded a narrow river-runner bound for Tanass Han. Anghara gave her a grateful smile for her unquestioning hospitality, and the tired face of the river woman was transformed as she smiled back and waved her on her way.

Anghara was one of two passengers on the boat, and had to share cabin quarters with what looked like a lapsed priest of Kerun. His hair was suspiciously coarsely chopped, as though his priest’s braid had been hacked off not too long ago, with a rather blunt instrument. She tried keeping her distance with silence, but he became increasingly persistent in his attentions as the days wore on. She even went so far as to approach the skipper of the small boat, asking if there wasn’t somewhere else she could sleep.

“Sorry, little love,” he said apologetically. “If I had a spot to myself I’d offer it you, but there’s three of us crew sleeping on top of each other as it is. And he paid his dues, just as you. But if he tries anything with you, you call me, you hear? I’ll see that he stays decent.”

“I’d almost rather take my chances with the crew,” said Anghara, with some desperation.

The skipper grinned, showing teeth that were green with decay. “Believe me, little love, one or two of us crew aren’t much of a substitute. I’m nice enough, but that Squint-eye…I wouldn’t trust him closer’n an arm’s length if I were you.”

No sooner had he left her than the ex-priest was at her side in the prow. “Telling tales?”

“Just insurance,” she said, looking at him coldly and stepping away.

“Now, don’t be like that. We’ve still days to go before we reach landing, and we’ve only each other to talk to. You can’t seriously think you’d find more in common with that yob of a river rat than you would with me? I can see you’ve had something of an education, just by the way you speak…”

“Leave me alone!” cried Anghara. “I mean it! The last time someone tried to harm me or someone I loved I…”
I put one of his eyes out.
But she could hardly say that. For one thing, it was not something she was proud of; for another, the priest would probably laugh at her, in which case…she might well have to put her words to the test. Her eyes were hooded, opaque. “Leave me alone…or take your chances.”

“Dangerous, are you?” he said, the tone of his voice mocking her dire implications, and laid a hot hand on her arm. He jerked it back in an instant, as though he had laid hold of a burning ember. “Ouch! What was that?”

The aura flared and died around Anghara’s head, almost too fast for the priest to have seen it. She smiled at him coolly as he snatched up his hand to stare at his unmarked fingers.

“Just a sample,” she said. “Stay away from me.”

He did, for two nights; then the temptation proved too much for him. Anghara woke on the third night to feel trembling fingers fumbling with the laces at her throat. Her first impulse was to protect not herself, but the king’s seal which she still wore beneath her bodice; as her eyes flew open she could only think of exposure for Dynan’s daughter and not of profane fingers reaching to cup the curve of her breast. She cried out, lashing out with power that was barely controlled, even as she brought up her hands to physically ward off the assault. The lascivious priest only had time for a strangled yelp of surprise before he was flung away from her as though by a blow, colliding with the opposite wall with a thump and fetching up crumpled against the far side of the cabin.

The commotion brought the crew, one with a burning torch, the skipper with a drawn dagger glinting in the flickering light. He surveyed the scene with something like dis gust, but he was not too far away from sympathy as he glanced at Anghara’s fellow passenger, who lay groaning in a heap where he had fallen. His eyes glinted as he turned and took in Anghara’s slender hands fumbling to retie the laces around her throat.

“What in the Nether Hell did she hit me with?” the priest kept on repeating, rubbing his tender jaw. At least one tooth appeared to be loose.

“Do I have to post a guard outside this place?” demanded the skipper gruffly, not in the best of tempers. “What’ll it take for you to mind your own business? I run a river boat, not a whorehouse; the lady paid to be taken down-river, just as you, and she’s under my protection as long as she’s on this boat. So are you, so far; don’t try any more tricks, else I withdraw it and dump you in the river to cool off. Am I making myself clear?”

“Very,” muttered the other passenger venomously.

The skipper sheathed his dagger in the knife scabbard at his waist, which obviously never left his side, even when he was asleep. He crossed to where Anghara sat huddled in her cloak, wide-eyed, her hands still at her throat, and bent over her, reaching out to cup her face in one calloused hand—it was a gentle gesture, but not an entirely friendly one. The palm was too hot and damp on her skin. “I’ll be just outside,” he said, and the voice was caressing. He patted her cheek in a manner that was almost possessive, and went out, signalling with an abrupt jerk of his head for the other two to follow.

“Is that it? Are you his piece?” hissed the ex-priest from across the cabin, making no move to approach Anghara again.

She fought the impulse to scream she was no one’s “piece” and simply lay back, wrapping herself into Kieran’s cloak as though seeking strength. It was obvious this boat was no longer safe; she had taken it because it had been the first one leaving, but it had been a mistake. She needed the anonymity of crowds, not the concentrated attention she was getting in this situation. She would have to find a way to get off the boat, at the next stop for water, perhaps, and try to find alternative transport for the rest of the journey.

It wasn’t going to be easy. The ex-priest left her alone in that he didn’t try to lay hands on her again; but now the skipper made her the focus of his attention. It was becoming increasingly clear he could well succeed where the other had failed, if only because he was the absolute law on his boat and there would be no recourse to a higher authority. At the next forest pier, Anghara stepped off the boat and lost herself in the mercifully dense crowd. Three or four boats had arrived more or less simultaneously, some larger than her own and laden with cargo which was being briskly unloaded without regard to any kind of order. The result was considerable confusion as stewards squabbled over what belonged to which estate. Anghara made enquiries at the other boats, but as luck would have it every single one would be continuing upriver, of no use to her.

“There’s another landing on the next bend,” one of the skippers said to her. “It’s quite busy; the next one down after that is Tanass Han, and there’s always boats in and out of there. You don’t like the look of yours for another day or two until Tanass, do you, eh?” He grinned, revealing teeth every bit as green as her own boat’s captain. It might have been something they all chewed, because the man spat something green and noxious into the water. “I don’t blame you, lass, the
Sanda
’s master’s a shifty lot. What made you pick him?”

“But how can I get to the other landing without a boat?” asked Anghara, ducking the question by asking one of her own.

“It’s not too far if you’re not averse to a little walking,” the captain said. “And you can always try and get a lift with one of them nobs, if they ever untangle themselves.” He gave a gleeful chuckle; one could easily conclude that the chaotic unloading was not entirely by accident. The river men took amusement where they could, their sense of humor notoriously unpredictable. “I could fix that for you, if you like. I know one or two of them well.”

But Anghara thought she had better arrange her own lifts. She was beginning to be wary of these river connections. If the captain intimated she might have something worth taking, it wasn’t inconceivable that an outwardly upright steward of a noble estate might be persuaded to deliver his “passenger” into the hands of someone whose acquaintance he would later deny to his grave, for a share of the anticipated loot. Many noble houses were notoriously loath to provide a decent wage when it came to household staff.

As it happened, an elderly steward who had only two small bundles to collect had the room and the inclination to offer some of his extra space to a paying passenger. He was leaving almost immediately and Anghara managed to give her particular skipper the slip without too much trouble, especially as she was leaving him in possession of full fare for an incomplete journey. She paid her passage with the steward both with good coin and with the obligation to listen to his long and often rambling discourses and moans about his family and master, both of whom, it would seem, had a lot to answer for. The journey to the next landing wasn’t long, but it seemed endless, and Anghara was profoundly grateful when she eventually reached the place. She scrambled down from her perch with her head aching violently, thanked her escort with as much graciousness as she could muster under the circumstances, and went down to the water.

For once, luck was with her. No less than three boats were leaving in the morning, and she could take her pick. On one she would have been the only passenger, but she had learned the senselessness of this the hard way. She opted instead for boatful of river farmers and their buxom wives, screaming children and squealing livestock in the shallow hold. Comfort was minimal, but it would do until Tanass Han, and if this was anything like Halas Han, she would have a rather larger choice when she got there.

“Where are you going on your own, and so young?” one of the farmers’ wives, with a wriggling toddler on her lap, asked the next morning as Anghara took an empty seat next to her. The woman didn’t mean to pry, but gossip was life’s blood to the farm folk, and Anghara was a new face.

“To family,” Anghara replied, rather rudely, but she really didn’t want to be the object of too much curiosity.

But her companion would not be deterred. “Is it far?”

“A village, near Calabra,” said Anghara, inventing. This was nothing new, she had already had at least two different lives. More, if she counted the tales she had spun while on this latest odyssey. Anyone trying to follow in her footsteps could hardly be blamed if he thought that not one, but at least five or six solitary girls had been seen travelling down-river, all going to different destinations.