Marith said, ‘Don’t for gods’ sake tell anyone, but I much prefer it out here to Illyr. You can see why Amrath started out to conquer the world, when you look at Illyr.’
‘Oh, but Illyr’s beautiful. Everywhere in the world is beautiful.’ Strained voice. Joyful voice. Her nose wrinkled: ‘Apart from the Wastes.’
The sun broke through a gap in the clouds, a crack of light in the sky too bright to look at, so bright it was almost black. Like the cloud was the edge of the world, the light beyond a void pouring some other life in. She pointed. ‘Look! There’s the hawk again.’
Black against the white. Closer, now: they could see the frantic beating of its wings. On the top of the ridgeway they were almost at its eye level. Marith thought: I wonder if it can see us watching it? Could I call it to me, like I can call a dragon?
The hawk dived. He couldn’t see it land.
Thalia said, ‘Do you remember the hawk in the desert? I’d never seen a hawk before. And the eagles, dancing around the peak of Calen Mon. I’d never seen an eagle before, either. Or a mountain. Or the snow.’ She smiled. Kissed him. Wrapped herself around him. Warm as the summer sun. ‘All those things, we have.’
‘All the world,’ Marith said. ‘All the world, I promised I’d show you. All the wonders. And our children. The world will be for them. Heaped up for them.’
On and on. Over and over. Pressing forwards to the end.
‘We will announce soon that you are pregnant.’ He was King of All Irlast. Of course he could father a child that would live.
Thalia laughed. ‘I should think everyone in our army knows already. I see the faces of my servant women every time they come to change my sheets. The way they stare at my stomach when I dress. It’s the only thing that seems to interest them.’
Had to think about this. ‘Yes … Well … Anyway … But … Yes. Yes. We’ll announce it soon. The army: gods, they’ll rejoice! And when it’s born! It’s lucky for a baby to be born at Sunreturn. Well-omened.’
‘Is it?’ She said, ‘The doctors said after Sunreturn, Marith.’
‘Oh. Yes. Well … Yanis Stansel’s youngest son was born at Sunreturn, always complained everyone forgot his birthday. I’m sure it’s just as lucky for a baby to be born in the spring.’
She said, ‘We’re marching south, Marith. By the time the baby is born we’ll be in the south. Where there won’t be a winter or a spring.’
‘So … maybe we’ll march north again.’ It should be born in Ethalden, perhaps, he thought. Or Malth Elelane. A king’s palace for a king’s heir. It would be nice, he thought, to go home for a while. Show his child the places of his own childhood. Sit in the hall of his ancestors, watching his children play on the floor with the dogs in the warmth of the hearthfire.
I will take her back to Malth Elelane, he thought. Go home. One day. I didn’t want to go back home at all once and now here I am, king. It cannot be so very hard to go back there now. All I need to do is give an order to march north. All I need to do, he thought, is turn my horse now to ride north. Come with me now, Thalia. We’ll ride away home to live in peace. You want that, too, I think. Do you? Raise our child in peace.
It was beginning to snow again. He began to worry suddenly that the cold … She has lost three pregnancies already. His mother had died in childbed. Take care of her and the child.
‘She must not die!’ he had screamed to the doctors, the first time she miscarried. ‘If she dies, I will kill you.’
‘It is not uncommon, My Lord King, for a woman to miscarry in the first few months. There is little danger to the mother, this early. A tragedy, but not a dangerous thing, in these early months.’ Just a lump of blood. Like a woman stabbed with a sword thrust. So three times now he had wept tears of relief. But it was snowing, and she must be looked after, though she was smiling with pleasure at the snow. Put her head back, stuck out her tongue to catch the snowflakes.
‘We should go back, Thalia.’
She looked out over the frozen landscape. ‘I suppose we should. I could stand here forever.’ She sighed, laughed, put her hands on his wet snow-crusted cloak. ‘You’re getting cold?’
‘The horses,’ he said with dignity, ‘are getting cold.’
They rode back through the ruins of Arunmen. Thalia wanted to see. Always, she wanted to see.
‘I need to remember,’ she said. ‘I am not ashamed of it: they fought us, they lost. Such is the way of things. Some draw the red lot, some draw the black or the white. But … I should remember. See it for myself.’
The city was a desolation, black rubble, the great obsidian walls tumbled down. Pools of blood, frozen, black and hard like the stone, the whole city glazed in blood. Fires still burning, dragon fire so hot the very stones were cracked open, holes in the earth where the fury of the fighting had devoured itself. Bodies in the rubble, under ice and ash and snowfall, dead faces masked in snow, rimed in blood. Burned. Dismembered. Hacked up and swallowed and spat out. Marith steered the horses carefully away from the ruined temple. Fragments of yellow paint. Around the palace, a new city of the Army of Amrath was forming: soldiers’ tents, cookfires, canteens, workshops. A smithy was working: Marith heard again the ring of the hammer, breathed in the hot metal scent. A hiss that was molten bronze being poured. A boy in a scarlet jacket embroidered with seed pearls, gold at his neck and waist and ankles, his face running with hatha sores, touting offering himself for one iron piece. A pedlar shouting his wares: ‘Tea and soap! Salt and honey! Spices! Herbs! Lucky charms!’ Two women washing clothes in a silver bowl that must once have graced a lord’s table. Plump glossy children in fur and satin, playing snowballs in the ruins of a nobleman’s great house. One of them hit another straight on, got snow all over her coat, and Marith laughed.
Some enterprising person had got a tavern back open. The front wall and the roof had been completely demolished; they’d made the best of it by setting up a fire for mulled wine and laying out some brightly coloured rugs; rigged up the remains of a soldier’s campaign tent to keep off the snow. It all looked very charming. Marith nodded at Thalia, they dismounted and tethered the horses, wandered up.
Everyone recognized them, of course, so they walked through a sea of prostrate bodies, more and more people running to kneel, to be in his presence, to see him through half-closed eyes. Voices ran like seawater: ‘The king! The king! Amrath Reborn! Ansikanderakesis Amrakane! The king! The king!’ Someone starting a song of praise for him.
Bliss.
Blush rising in his face from sheer delight at it. He laughed with joy.
They sat down on the bright pretty rugs, the woman running the place rushed over with cups of hot spiced wine, a dish of keleth seeds, a dish of cakes. The cups were enamelled silver, yellow garlands around a scene of fighting birds. Very finely done, actually: he’d guess not from the tavern but looted from somewhere in the east and lugged halfway across Irlast. The wine was delicious, thick and golden. Also looted. The cakes were stale and dry as sand.
The tavern woman prostrated herself flat on her face in the snow. ‘I am honoured beyond all honour. My Lord King, My Lady Queen, I kneel at your feet, I am your slave. Take the cups, the plates, everything here in this tavern, our gifts, our token of our love for you.’
Beyond bliss. Ah, such a good thing, to be loved like this. He smiled down at the tavern woman, told her to get up, kissed her hand. Drained his cup, waved over a passing soldier: ‘Take this cup back to the palace. Have Lord Durith summoned, tell him to send a dozen gold cups to this woman in place of this one she has kindly given me.’ The woman went pink with astonishment. Tears in her eyes. Thalia laughed with delight.
‘My Lord King. My Lord King. Thank you. Thank you.’
‘I’ll take a bottle of this wine, too, then, if I may?’ Marith said, smiling at