The taps in the taverns would scarcely run dry on this night. Landlords had stocked their cellars for weeks, while the folk from Sessalie’s farthest-flung valleys crammed into the citadel to honour Princess Anja’s brilliant match. Their exuberance was justified. A marriage alliance with the Kingdom of Devall promised them access to the coveted wealth of the sea trade. Yet if craft shops and merchants had cause to rejoice, no soldier who bore the crown’s falcon blazon was likely to rest before cock’s crow.
Twenty hours on duty, with no respite in sight, Mykkael grumbled, ‘At least on a battlefield, a man got the chance to lay down his shield after sundown.’
He stretched his knotted back, steeled himself for discomfort, then clamped iron hands around his thigh above the knee. A grunt ripped through his teeth as he raised the game limb on to the plank trestle that served him as weapon rack and desk. There, forced to pause, he blinked through running sweat, while the twinge of pinched nerves rocked him dizzy.
Mother of all thundering storms, how he ached! Far more than a man should, who had no trace of grey. Still young, still vigorous, Mykkael kept his sable hair cropped from blind habit, as he had through his years as a mercenary.
Nonetheless, his career as a hired sword was finished. Cut short, with the spoils and pay shares laid aside not enough to sustain him in retirement. His fiercely kept dream, of an apple-bearing orchard and a pasture to breed horses, lay as far beyond grasp as the moon.
‘Damn lady fortune for a cross-grained crone.’ Mykkael glowered at his leg, stretched across the tabletop like so much worthless carrion. His infirmity disgusted him. Three tavern brawls nipped in the bud, two street riots quelled, and a knife fight in the market started by a Highgate lordling who was fool enough to try to nab a cutpurse; scarcely enough exertion to wind him, yet the pain clamped down with debilitating force the longer he stayed on his feet.
‘Borri’ vach!’ he swore under his breath. The uncouth, rolling gutturals of the southern desert dialect matched his savage mood as he unhooked the looped studs at his calf. No help for the embarrassment, that canvas breeches looked ridiculous under his blazoned captain’s surcoat. Yet the more genteel appointments of trunk hose and hightop boots had proved to be too binding. Mykkael jerked up the cuff, laying bare his crippled knee with its snarl of livid scars.
Even in hindsight, he took little comfort from the troop surgeon’s final prognosis. ‘Powers be thanked, young man, you’re still hale and breathing. With a joint break like yours, and a septic laceration, I’d have dosed you senseless, and roped you out straight and taken that leg with a bone saw.’
Mykkael endured the lasting bitterness. Not to walk was to die. Even strapped in the mud of a drawing poultice, screaming half senseless with fever, he had kept that core of self-awareness. Others might cling to life, hobbling on crutches or a peg leg. For Mykkael, any handicap that rendered him defenceless would have wounded pride enough to kill him.
Alive enough to wrestle with his poisonous regrets, he groped through the clutter of bottles and remedy tins, while the cramps throbbed relentlessly through muscle and nerve, and the shattered bone that fastened damaged ligaments. Already the discomfort played the length of his leg. By experience he knew: the spasms would soon lock his hip and seize his back, unless the liniment just acquired from the nomad in the market could deliver him the gift of a miracle.
Hooves clattered in the outer bailey. Someone shouted. A burst of agitated voices erupted in the lower guardroom, fast followed by the rushed pound of feet up the stairwell.
Mykkael found the dingy tin and flipped off the cap, overwhelmed by the smell of crude turpentine. ‘Powers of deliverance,’ he gasped. Eyes streaming, he scooped up a sticky dollop. The unnatural stuff blistered, even through his layers of callus.
Regardless, he slathered the paste over his knee. Its raw fire scoured, searing through entrenched pain. Mykkael kneaded in the residue, his breath jerked through his half-closed throat. He had no peace to lose. The fresh bout of trouble bearing down on his doorway was unlikely to grant him blessed ease in a chair, replete with grain whisky and hot compresses.
A staccato knock, cut off as the latch tripped. Vensic poked his snub nose inside, and grimaced in startled distaste. ‘Captain, for the love of crown and country! This place reeks like a tannery’
Mykkael pointedly hooked the tin closer. ‘Should I give a damn who in the reaper’s many hells finds my off-duty habits offensive?’ He slopped another gob of liniment across his spasmed calf, and this time suppressed his urge to wince. ‘Whatever complaint’s come roosting this time, I’ll remind you, Sergeant Jedrey has the watch.’
Apologetic, Vensic stepped inside. He shut the door, his easy-natured, upland features braced to withstand his captain’s dicey temper. ‘Jedrey’s through the Middlegate, routing vandals from the merchants’ quarter. You notice anything irregular on patrol?’
Mykkael shrugged, still massaging his wracked limb. ‘The usual few brawlers and a bravo who got himself stabbed. A drunk was struck by a carriage. Dead on impact. The rest was all rumour, thankfully unfounded. Have you heard the crazy story that the princess ran away? Left her royal suitor abandoned at the feast, weeping on the skinny shoulder of the seneschal.’
Silence, of a depth to make the ears ring. Mykkael glanced up, astonished. The absurd notion of court curmudgeon and jilted foreign prince should have raised a howling snort of laughter. ‘Better say what’s happened, soldier!’
‘You have a formal summons. Brought in by a royal herald in state livery, though he’s masked his gold thread under a plain cloak.’ Unwontedly deadpan, Vensic added, thoughtful, ‘Shut-mouthed as a clam concerning the king’s word, though we warned him you’d be sharp if we had to fetch you down to the wardroom.’
Mykkael’s busy fingers stopped working in the liniment. ‘A crown herald! Below the Highgate? Has the moat watch gone bashed on cloud wine?’
But the stunned rabbit shine to Vensic’s blue eyes arrested his captain’s disbelief.
‘Of all the blinding powers of daylight!’ Touched by an odd chill, Mykkael slapped down his turned cuff. He snatched up the rag meant for oiling his sword, wiped his smeared fingers, then hauled his lame leg from the trestle. A useless point, to argue that Princess Anja never acted the tart, or lowered herself to go slumming. Unlike her rakehell older brother, she visited the lower citadel only for processionals, surrounded by the gleam of her palace guard retinue, sweeping through to join the hunt, or to settle the petty grievances in the outlying hamlets that had languished as the king’s health faltered.
‘No one’s mentioned an armed party of abductors in the wine shops,’ Mykkael said with biting sarcasm. Tiny Sessalie was too hidebound to harbour a conspiracy without the busybody matrons making talk. So hidebound and small that every shopkeeper and servant knew his neighbour’s close affairs, with half the blood in the kingdom related to itself by kin ties that confounded memory. ‘Hard pressed, I’d be, to arrest a single miscreant who’s sober enough to raise a weapon.’
Mykkael snatched up his naked blade, still loath to credit rumour. Princess Anja was beloved for her light-hearted spirit. Already, her compassion had earned the same reverence the queen had known before her tragic death. To Mykkael, she was an icon who demanded sharp respect. He had needed his crack division and fully half of his reserves to restrain the cheering commons when the handsome Prince of Devall had arrived with his train to formalize his suit for her marriage. Everyone had noted the princess’s flushed face. The trill of silver harness bells had shimmered on the air, as, radiant with joy, she had spurred her mount to welcome the match that young love and state auspices had favoured. The branding memory lingered, of the kiss exchanged upon the public thoroughfare. Her Grace’s greeting had burst all restraint—an explosive storm of passion more likely to invite a lusty midnight foray to her bedchamber.
‘Pretty foolish,