The causeway crossed a creek busy with wading birds. A few men, too, picked their way across the banks, lanterns bobbing, bending to poke in the mud with long sticks.
‘Lugworm gatherers,’ Marith explained to Thalia, seeing her look at them curiously, black with mud, bent over, filthy wet sacks over their backs. ‘Razor clams. Samphire. Good eating, samphire.’ Mud worms? Thalia felt her stomach turn.
Reed beds again, then the path broadened and rose and they were on dry land, a round hill rising clear of the marshes, bigger than it had looked from a distance, crowned with a stone tower, a dark palisade of sharp spikes. On the other side, the hill ran down into mud flats and the sea.
In through the wide wooden gates. A handful of men cheered their coming with a crash of bronze. They pulled up to a stop before the gates of the central tower, where a woman in a green gown stood waiting, a jewelled cup in her pale hands. She sank down to her knees as Marith dismounted.
‘My Lord King. Be welcome here.’ The woman’s voice was thin and sweet, like the chatter of birds. She held out the cup to Marith, who drank deeply then passed it to Osen who also drank. A servant came to help Thalia dismount. After the muck and emptiness of the marshes, the sudden contrast was startling: the woman, young and rosy fair, her dress worked with silver, jewels at her throat; the doors thrown open to show a chamber hung with bright tapestries; servants with fireside warmth pouring from their coats in the cold outside air. Osen took Thalia’s arm and led her in after Marith, an antechamber and then a great room with high carved beams, small narrow windows to keep out the wild of the marsh. She stood gratefully by the fire while the men of the place knelt in turn to Marith, kissed his hand as king. Then up to a high-roofed bedroom at the top of a steep spiral stair. Gloomy, with a strong scent of beeswax candles that made Thalia shiver, more small narrow windows giving glimpses of dark sky.
She assumed they would sleep now, her head was spinning with tiredness after the long ride, but a maidservant laid out a dress of blue velvet for her, a shirt and leggings and jacket for Marith. They were ushered down into the main chamber, where a feast was spread, hot smoky air reeking of meat and alcohol and sweat and salt water, a huge fire casting flickering shadows, cheering faces livid in the flames. The king’s soldiers, the men of Malth Calien, Lady Fiolt and her women, all rose and bowed their heads as Marith entered, and the cry went up hailing him. Lady Fiolt placed a cup in his hands, smiling; she was dressed now in scarlet, with red jewels in her hair and at her throat. Marith drained it, gave it back.
‘King Marith,’ Lady Fiolt said.
I cannot leave him.
Cannot? Will not? Do not want to?
Who can tell?
But there is pleasure, is there not, in being loved by a king?
Darkness. A narrow passage closing around her like a fist. For a long time now it had tunnelled downwards, creeping deep into the earth. Worm lair. Grave pit. She had felt, for a long time as she crawled, the anger and hate following her. The earth ringing with the crash of stones falling. The world being ruined.
The tunnel dipped again. Sobbing, she crawled on, the rough ground cutting her hands. Her family’s death riding on her back. She was tired now. So tired. Her grief came quicker. Grief and guilt and rage. She was hungry, she began to realize. She had no idea how long she had been crawling. Hours. Minutes. Days. Her mouth was dry with thirst. Her head hurt, where the mage fire had struck her. She desperately needed to piss.
The tunnel flattened, then began to rise. A smell came into the air, damp and fresh. A ghost of light ahead of her. A sound. Her pace slowed to inching forward, desperately eager, terrified of what she would find. Get out, escape this. Stay here in the dark of the tunnel, where nothing is real. Out there everything is ashes. Everyone is dead and the world is burned. She came on slowly to the end, where the mouth of the tunnel opened as a hole in the cliffs, shielded by tumbled rocks. The sea beat on the beach below her, making the shingle sing and sigh. The last light of evening, a few stars being swallowed by rising cloud. She crawled out of the tunnel gasping, clawing at the air that smelled of the sea. Alive. The grief in her turned to laughter, that she had beaten him. Alive!
Landra Relast, the eldest daughter of the Lord of Third Isle, kin to the Altrersyr and the Calborides and the kings of Bakh, descendent of Amrath, a great high noble lady of the White Isles. Landra Relast, whose brother and sister and mother and father had been murdered, whose home had been destroyed, who had watched Marith Altrersyr her promised husband burn everything she had to dust. Landra Relast, who alone had escaped the power he had over them, the glamour of King Marith who was Amrath returned to them, the madness of their glorious hunger for killing and death. Landra Relast, who had fled from him, wormed her way through the old secret tunnels beneath Malth Salene, away from banefire and mage fire and sword strokes, to the safety of an empty stony beach.
Landra Relast, who had nothing left.
She pissed behind a rock, though there was no one about to see her. Rinsed her hands and face in the sea, the salt on her wounds searing pain. Her dress was torn to shreds, she must stink of smoke. Dreaded to think what had happened to her hair and scalp.
It was very cold. The wind was picking up, the waves pounding the shingle. Thin, bitter rain. Landra tipped her head back, licked the water from her face. Her head was aching.
There should be a village ahead of her. An hour’s walk, perhaps. Her legs were shaking with hunger so she would go slower. The shingle was hard to walk on, slipping under her feet, after a while she took off her shoes thinking it might be easier, then put them on again when the stones cut her skin. So dark, the sea roaring half invisible beside her. Finally, ahead, the lights that must be the village, the creak and chatter and smell of human life.
Landra sat down on the shingle and began to think.
Lady Landra Relast. Someone would recognize her. Impossible that they would not. Even if they did not recognize her, it would be obvious where she came from, with her fine dress and her burned skin. Impossible to guess how they had taken all that had happened, or what side they might be on.
But there was nowhere else.
The first house was in utter darkness. At the next a light burned, thin lines through the gaps in the shutters. A string of stones hung from the doorpost. Hagstones, wards against the powers of dark. A good omen. Landra knocked. Through the shutters she could hear voices whispering, a clatter of metal and then a silence, and then the door opened a crack. A man stared out. In his hands a long rod of iron, black in the night.
‘I’m unarmed,’ Landra said urgently, showing her white lady’s hands cut and bloodied and burned and rubbed raw. ‘I need … I ask your help. Please. Shelter. Food. I can pay.’
‘Help?’ Pale eyes stared at her fearfully. Saw her burned hair and burned face. The door moved to close.
Not back out into the night. The dark. Her legs almost buckled. So hungry. So thirsty. So tired. Not back out into the night. ‘Please.’ She almost screamed it. ‘Please. I am Landra Relast of Malth Salene, Lord Relast’s daughter. There has been fighting … You will know, I suppose. Please, I beg you. Food and water. Help.’
‘Lord Relast’s dead,’ the man said. ‘They’re all dead. Malth Salene’s smoking ruins. The king’s dead there. There’s a new young king come.’