Cattrick hooted. ‘It’s a woman, after all!’ His sarcasm raked. ‘Princess Talith didn’t commit suicide.’
Mearn’s first response was a whitening about the lips as the muscles of his jaw sharply tightened. ‘On that, there’s my knife. You can draw your own conclusion.’
‘I don’t need to. Nor will I fight for a woman whose sorrows are ended.’ One sudden, strong move, and Cattrick impaled the fine blade in the tabletop. ‘The truth holds no passion. My defection last spring was forced by a Koriani oath of debt, sworn on behalf of my sister. Their hold on me’s forfeit, discharged by that letter.’ He leaned forward, his shadow looming over the damning designs on the trestle. ‘Let’s by all means stay forthright. If this is an offer to join Alestron in conspiracy, I accept. If it’s not what I think, then hear my sweet warning. You’ll leave Riverton by sea, with a load of stone lashed to your ankles.’
Mearn’s mercurial laugh intermingled with the chime as he cast his own steel to sliding rest beside the dagger impaled in the trestle. Metal struck metal. The pealing clang reechoed to the wicked bent of his gambler’s delight. ‘I have a much nicer idea. Why not sit down and stop bristling hackles? Let me extend an invitation: let’s both drink beer to the Shadow Master’s health over a certain chest of gold in the ducal hall at Alestron.’ As an afterthought, he grinned. ‘We build ships there, too.’
Cattrick’s brows furrowed upward. ‘Then you’re Prince Arithon’s covert ally?’
‘Since Vastmark,’ Mearn admitted. ‘We, too, had our reasons for turning coat.’ He hiked up one leg and perched on the edge of the trestle. ‘I can write my brother in coded state language and demand his swiftest galley to bear me homeward come the spring. First, I’ll need to know what date to ask for, and which port of call will offer the most favorable rendezvous.’
‘The outer reefs, northwest of Orlest,’ Cattrick said with scarcely a second’s hesitation. ‘The timing, of course, must depend on the prince as he sets final plans for his wedding.’
Autumn 5653
Dispositions
On the snow-dusted moors of Araethura, the herbalist’s cottage stands empty and cold, the enchantress who lived there gone north to ply her talents in the stews by the Morvain quay, where street children snatch life by robbery and wits; and knife wounds acquired by randy sailors and the unending afflictions of poor quarter harlots will take her mind far from the betrayal enacted through a black-haired shepherd boy’s trust …
The day before Prince Lysaer’s sealed orders reach Caithwood, the Sorcerer Asandir stands under the frost-turned crown of a great oak, his expression like chisel-cut granite; over his head, the winds of late autumn thrash the leaves to a song of rare fury, and the drumming of twigs and the moaning of pines transmit the tattoo outward through the forest like the ripples cast across a stilled pool …
In the teeming port city of Innish, on the south coast, a fair young man entrusted as merchant’s factor sits by the wavering light of a candle, reading a letter in sharp, coded script that describes a specific tavern in Southshire where dispatches are to be left, and closes with the laughing, wishful observation, ‘Keep your harpy of a sister well clear of my affairs, or one better, tell her I’ll play tasteless ballads for her wedding if she’ll find the good grace to exchange feckless seafaring for marriage …’
Late Autumn–Winter 5653
The sealed orders from Avenor reached the small settlement known as Watercross in the shortened days of late autumn. There, the river route through Ilswater intersected the trade road that spanned Caithwood, linking Valenford to Quarn and the southern seaports of Tysan. Built at the threshold of the ancient stand of forest, the massive old land bridge, with its mossy stone pilings, spanned the river in the elegant arches which bespoke the masterful skill of centaur masons. Since the departure of the Paravians, mankind had made free with the axe. Five inns clustered by the verge, a congested accretion of multiple wings of timber raised three storeys high. These were fronted by a commodious barge dock, and boasted between them a post stable and a prosperous smithy. The streetside cluster of shops fanned into a disordered tangle of clapboard cottages, each with a cow and a garden patch. The steadings were inhabited by the families of serving girls who had married rivermen or drovers, and raised sprawling families whose lifeblood was tuned to the movement of commerce.
The summer’s campaign to suppress Caithwood’s clansmen had spurred wider change. The inns were jammed to screaming capacity, each room and attic housing crown officers and stockpiles of perishable supplies. In response to demand, every Watercross resident had rented out bedrooms and haylofts at extortionist prices, then relocated their displaced and bickering offspring in the crannies of pantries and woodsheds. Talk of new building abounded, while tents and picket lines crowded the riverbank, and more timber fell to clear acreage. Amid the chewed ends of stumps and the trodden, pocked earth quilted over with flame-bright swatches of fallen leaves, the orderly tents of an Alliance encampment nestled into the river’s south bank. Its hub of command was a sagging board building that, in springtime, had served as a pig shack.
The sow and her farrow had long since graced the pot. Under the damp thatch that had been their last shelter, Etarra’s Lord Harradene snapped off his gloves and stamped the caked mud from his boots. The day officer delivered the most urgent news through the noise of his jangling impatience, while a gesture saw the wrapped packets of dispatches accepted by his breathless equerry. Harradene stilled as he heard the reports. His cliff-edged frown stayed quarried in place as he learned that the camp north of Caithwood had withdrawn in disorder back to Valenford.
‘No, don’t repeat that,’ he snapped. ‘I heard damn all the first time. Puling ninnies, every milk-nosed captain who let his company turn tail. Fact’s known well enough. Fellowship conjury never kills.’ He slapped the royal writ on the trestle with the maps and glowered at his ring of cringing officers. ‘I don’t care horse apples if some fools have fled from a display of arcane posturing! Your prince wants a fire. Therefore, this stand of wood’s going to burn! We’re driving clan dogs out of hiding with singed tails, and the crown’s bounties won’t wait for the hindmost.’
Through a spattering of cheers, someone’s raspy question prevailed. ‘Is this wise?’
The boldest of the sergeants appended a protest. ‘The Sorcerer claimed he would waken the trees.’
Lord Commander Harradene spun back, his spiked brows still furrowed, and the shoulders under his sunwheel surcoat bristled as a bear’s before a charge. ‘Oh, did he indeed?’ His rankling, Etarran sarcasm thundered, sifting fine dust from the thatch. ‘And what will that mean, do you think? That hundred-year-old oaks are likely to rise up and walk? That greenwood is going to bear steel?’ He turned in a tight circle, leaving no officer unwithered by his scathing contempt. ‘Is there anyone else present with the brains of a chicken?’
No one spoke or moved. Pent silence expanded like poison, sawn through at a distance by barking dogs and the wailing of some mother’s toddler.
‘Good!’ Lord Harradene slapped the wet ends of his gloves against the dulled mail of his byrnie. ‘Now show me you’ve kept the two bollocks Ath gave