Foul Tide's Turning (8 page)

Sheplar snorted. ‘Your price has already been paid in blood.’

‘Reconsider.’

‘Be quiet, bumo. You mistake me for a merchant. I am an aviator of the Rodalian skyguard, bound by our warrior’s code, not one of your tame slave traders.’

She switched her attention to her ex-slave. ‘And what do you say, gask?’

‘What is to be is yet to be chosen,’ said Kerge. ‘For me as it is for you. We are on the great fractal tree together.’

Cassandra was about to argue further when she heard a shout from the forest floor below. There were two human visitors walking below, one of them she recognized. Carter Carnehan. Another ex-slave from the sky mines. The one whose father had arrived in Vandia to help lead the slave revolt. Cassandra’s mother had ordered this boy whipped more than once, but the only lesson it seemed the young barbarian had learnt was rebellion and insolence. By all accounts, it was this young savage’s father who had carried her away from the battlefield, conveying her to a life of captivity here. Oh yes, she had cause to loathe the Carnehan family. They were the authors of all her current troubles and a fair few past ones as well. Sheplar Lesh obviously didn’t feel the same way. The clown’s face widened into a broad smile and he raced down the stairs to the forest floor to meet the visiting Weylanders. Cassandra was carried along in his wake like an afterthought. For someone who was used to being the centre of attention, able to control lessers with a flick of her fingers, her unacceptable demotion in position rankled like an open wound. She watched them shake hands, the second Weylander introduced as Tom Purdell from the Guild of Librarians.

‘How does the day find you, Kerge, Mister Lesh?’

‘I have a feeling we will soon need to relocate our guest,’ said Kerge.

Sheplar nodded in agreement. ‘Our welcome here is quickly being worn out.’

Carter scowled towards Cassandra as if all of this was her fault. The damnable impudence of the slave. The blame for her predicament lay squarely on his broad shoulders in the first place. ‘I’d chain her in down in the rectory’s storm cellar, but I’d need to employ a food tester to make sure someone in town doesn’t poison her.’

‘Food tester. A fitting enough position for you, slave,’ said Cassandra.

‘No sky mines here, your
ladyship
,’ said Carter, hooking his finger under his coat and revealing a flash of his holster, ‘but we’ve got plenty of remote farms with cold, hard winter fields that need ploughing. Maybe I can find one of your old mine workers with a swine shed for you to bed down in, a plough harness small enough to fit you, and a soul sweet enough not to impale you on the end of their pitchfork.’

‘I don’t fear you. Where I stand, the empire stands too.’

He grunted dismissively. ‘I’ve received a message from the capital that you must hear,’ Carter said to Sheplar and Kerge, ‘but—’ he nodded towards Cassandra ‘—not in front of
her
. Mister Purdell, if you’d be so good as to keep an eye on her little
ladyship
here …’

The locals walked out of earshot, deep in conversation. She burned to know what they were talking about. Something that might give her heart and hope, if that damned escaped slave Carter Carnehan didn’t want her to hear about it. Perhaps concerning distant Vandia, even? She tried to edge forward, but a hand from one of the pair of gasks behind her fell instantly on her shoulder.

Tom Purdell gazed at her, as insolent as the rest of them. ‘You’re not exactly the most popular person around here, are you?’

‘Do I look like I care what a mere barbarian thinks of me? One day Carter Carnehan will encounter my nation again, and his insolence will be burnt out of him inch by inch by an imperial torturer.’

‘That’d be a shame,’ said Tom Purdell. ‘He seems like a nice enough fellow.’

‘He’s property which we paid for. His very presence here amounts to theft.’

Purdell smiled. ‘Here’s a little advice, even if it is unasked for. Never annoy the man who gets to decide the class of pig shed you end up sleeping in.’

‘You’re correct, it
was
unasked for.’

Purdell shrugged, seeming to find their exchange amusing. More than she did, at any rate. The meeting over, the other two men and their gask ally returned. Cassandra ran forward and grabbed at Carter’s coat. ‘Don’t let them take me away from here! At least these gask savages aren’t escaped slaves with a grudge against me!’

Carter pushed her away. ‘Please, I’ve seen better acting during the local amateur dramatics night.’

‘That’s my fault,’ said Tom. ‘I told her if she was nice to you, you might find her a sty with a blanket, rather than just straw and wet mud.’

Carter rubbed the scar slanting across his face. Cassandra remembered her mother had laid her whip on the impudent devil to make a point. ‘Our hospitality’s been a sight friendlier than yours ever proved, Vandian. You’ll damn well travel where we send you.’ Her escaped slave shook the mountain aviator’s hand in farewell, and then the gask’s. ‘I know this isn’t exactly what you trained for in the skyguard, Sheplar, but mind her well. Kerge, look after yourself. Just remember, whatever happens, it’ll never be a tenth as bad as what we survived in the empire.’

Kerge nodded. ‘You speak the truth, old friend.’

‘It is a strange wind that has blown us together,’ said Sheplar. He glanced at Cassandra. ‘An annoying one, too, at times. But I still follow my honour.’ He called out to Carter and the other young Weyland man before they were lost among the giant trees, immense bark columns standing like sentinels in the green cathedral. ‘And remember, if it comes to it, there are wind temples in Rodal where it takes half an hour in a basket to be winched up to the monks.’ The two men disappeared into the emerald twilight. Sheplar Lesh patted Cassandra on the shoulder in an irritatingly familiar manner. ‘Yes, bumo, there are always long corridors that need sweeping and meals of rice and root that require preparing inside the temples.’

Cassandra didn’t retort with the first thought that leapt into her mind: that she would find it a lot easier to prepare meals as their drudge, now she had slipped one of Carter’s two daggers out of his belt while pretending to throw herself on the barbarian slave’s mercy. The blade was concealed up her sleeve. Not that she would be using the weapon to peel vegetables. It was going to come in very useful for dislodging the floor of her makeshift cell this night, and it never hurt to have a blade to dig into bark when scaling down tree trunks, either. Handy for cutting a gask sentry’s throat too. Cassandra’s acting might not be up to much, but when it came to sleight of hand and armed combat, she had been tutored by
masters
.

FOUR

FOR THE HONOUR OF
THE HOUSE

Duncan watched Princess Helrena moving around the duelling hall, sweating and cursing as she thrust and parried, warily circling her trainer. Helrena had been pushing herself hard for the best part of an hour, as though trying to exorcise her demons. The princess’s squat, bullet-headed head of security, Paetro, stood alongside Duncan at the edge of the hall, passing little comment beyond a grunt or two as the two combatants whirled around each other. Helrena trained today with a foreign weapons master, a man expert in the fighting style the empire knew as long-and-short-stab; the
long
being a single-edged thirty-five inch long sabre; the
short
, a slightly curved dagger with a basket hilt designed to block a sword. To look at the princess, you would hardly know she’d had her leg crushed, the best part of a warship’s bridge crumpling around her when the great stratovolcano had erupted during the slave revolt. Duncan touched his chest at the battle’s memory. There was still shrapnel embedded inside him, too close to his heart for removal to be risked even given the almost supernatural skills of the imperium’s surgeons. Not shrapnel from Jacob Carnehan’s bullet, precisely aimed at his heart, but pieces of the medallion that had saved his life even while being driven deep inside his body. Who would have thought Northhaven’s pastor possessed such accurate aim? Not Duncan Landor, certainly.

The wound was part of him, now. A reminder, as if any were needed, to never underestimate your opponents. His friend, Paetro, carried the scars of the same encounter – and not just physical wounds. Paetro’s pilot daughter had died, gunned down by Jacob Carnehan as she tried to protect Lady Cassandra. Not a day went by when Duncan didn’t regret his little charge’s absence. What was the poor girl enduring, now? Nothing good he feared; captured by Weylanders who had been held as slaves. Taken for what? Revenge? Ransom? Protection? Some vengeful sense of symmetry on the part of the pastor? Your empire stole my son for a slave, so I’ll take your daughter? Ultimately, Duncan knew the motivation mattered little. Only the perilous pragmatic reality of the situation. Duncan trusted his once-friend Carter appreciated the sacrifice the pastor had made for him. Attempting the near impossible journey to the empire. All that way, all that blood on the road, not to mention the fierce fight at the other end. Duncan should never have expected his father to do the same. Of course not. Why would old Benner Landor bother joining the rescue party when he could stay at home, count his coins, manage his estate and pay for others to go off and do the dying for him? It was
only
his son and daughter that had been snatched during the slavers’ raid. Jacob Carnehan had made that trip for his son without a second thought, knowing the odds were he’d die on the way, if not at the destination. He’d turned up a different man, half insane and the remainder feral. But he’d turned up. Carter Carnehan should take time to appreciate what it was to have a real family. Not a father for whom the jingle of silver meant more than the lives of his own blood. Or a sister who Duncan had rescued from the sky mines, only to be betrayed when she threw in with the rebel slaves. It was good to think about them from time to time, Willow and his father, to remember the pain of their betrayal. It made his new life here in the empire all the easier to bear. Not the son of a great man, but his own man. Self-made, become a citizen through his own talents and deeds.

Paetro wouldn’t talk about what had happened during the battle. But then, the old soldier had been responsible for Lady Cassandra’s protection. Paetro had kept the girl alive from enemies within and without the house from almost the moment she’d been born. And he had allowed her to be snatched out of the empire by nothing more than a rag-tag bunch of exhausted travellers and a dirty mob of escaped slaves. Assisted by Duncan’s failure in that battle, too, of course.

Helrena back-stepped on the duelling floor, her trainer’s sword sliding through the space her head had occupied a second earlier.

‘Too slow,’ muttered Paetro.

‘She’s wearing practice armour,’ said Duncan. ‘She’d move faster without gel-padding and face guard.’

‘Not fast enough,’ said Paetro. ‘Her leg hasn’t healed fully. Look how she becomes unsteady on the left leg when the weapons master forces her to pivot on it. Anyone with half an eye will notice her bad leg in a duel and use it against her. Slide in, exploit the weak spot and gut her.’

‘Nobody has managed to do it yet.’

‘We’ve been lucky, lad. The challenges have been fought in private, no one surviving long enough to tell another where our mistress is weak. Circae’s not sent her best fighters yet. She’s been testing the princess; waiting to see how the other great houses side before making her real move.’

‘Given that Circae is Cassandra’s grandmother, you’d think that she’d be looking to help us rescue her rather than hindering us.’

‘Circae only ever desired custody of the little highness to pain her daughter-in-law,’ snarled Paetro. ‘Do not mistake anything the old witch does as love or care for Lady Cassandra. The little highness can only rely on us for that. Circae scents our house’s blood in the water and plans to strip us of our position and wealth. She will
feed
, and it matters little who gets in the way.’

‘Still,’ said Duncan. ‘Her son’s only child … taken hostage.’

‘A son Circae as good as murdered to get her own way,’ said Paetro. ‘Circae has played matchmaker for the emperor for generations now, filling his harem with hundreds of wives, producing thousands of children and countless more grandchildren. Everyone within the celestial caste is related to everyone else inside it. Whoever the princess guts in a duel, she’s severing a branch of the imperial family’s tree. You tread on your relatives to get to the top here.’

Duncan remembered how easily his sister had betrayed him. How quickly she had thrown the freedom he’d arranged for her back in his face.
Not just Vandians, it seems
. ‘You were friends with Cassandra’s father in the legion,’ said Duncan. A statement more than a question.

‘Aye,’ said Paetro. ‘Friends and brothers in battle. I miss poor old Aivas.’ He looked at Helrena, clashing steel with the trainer. ‘I know the princess still mourns her husband. And there wasn’t a week that passed that Lady Cassandra didn’t ask me to tell her an old war story about her father the hero.’

‘You once told me that Circae had her son stripped of caste and exiled to fight with the army for daring to fall in love with Princess Helrena, but you never told me who Aivas’s father was.’

‘Not the emperor, if that’s what you’re thinking,’ laughed Paetro. ‘The head of the imperial harem doesn’t also get to bear the emperor children; although I dare say the old goat tupped Circae, too. Just without issue, is all. If Circae had given birth to children with imperial blood running through their veins, the old witch would have been sure to match the emperor with noblewomen likely to bear inbred weaklings and cripples, and positioned her own children at the front of the queue to seize the throne.
All
the sons and daughters of the empire need to breed strong for the empire to survive. No, the little highness can only call Emperor Jaelis grandfather through Princess Helrena. Her other grandfather was rumoured to be a professional gladiator that Circae took as a lover. He died, I think. Most of them do, sooner or later.’

Duncan watched the fierce training duel continue. ‘Can the house’s surgeons do any more for the princess’s leg?’

Paetro shook his head. ‘Not unless they can give us time, for that’s what is needed for the mistress to heal.’

Duncan bit his lip.
Time
. Not much of it left, now. Helrena had barely managed to stop her house being stripped of their sky-mining rights after the slave revolt. It was only the fact the ruthless head of the secret police was up to his neck in the empire’s failure to control the slaves that had saved them from total disgrace. Exile, execution, worse. Slippery Apolleon had called in many favours to extradite himself from the disastrous revolt, and in doing so, had been required to spare his ally and her forces … who had been acting, for the most part, under his command. But the name of Helrena’s house was still mud, associated with the only mass escape of slaves in the imperium’s history, a revolt which had sparked dozens of smaller outbreaks of violence and rebellion among the easily encouraged slave force and lower-caste citizenry. The imperium of Vandia could be many things, but Duncan knew that as soon as it was perceived as fallible, as weak, the empire would fall in an inferno of ancient grievances. If its own restless masses didn’t do the job first, it’s jealous, subjugated neighbours would seize their revenge. But it wasn’t for the likes of them that the princess trained so hard.

The door at the back of the duelling hall opened and Apolleon appeared, causing Duncan to shudder involuntarily.
Why do I feel like this, every time he visits the Castle of Snakes
? As always, Apolleon wore luxurious civilian clothes. A dark tunic with a wolf-like emblem over his right breast, a velvet cloak lined in crimson. Apolleon’s pale white face shone round and dandyish, jutting out from a stiff, high collar where his neck emerged. There was something about the ageless man, something beyond Apolleon’s falsely obsequious manners so at odds with his position as head of the
hoodsmen
, the emperor’s ruthless secret police. Strange shadows that moved around the edges of the man when you caught sight of him in the corner of your eye; shadows which brought back the memory of the peculiar howls Duncan had heard reverberating through the thick clouds of volcanic ash during the revolt. Inhuman wails. But he needed to put his feelings aside. For without this slippery creature, this menacing, awkward ally, the house Duncan had joined his fortunes to would be destroyed. The man’s appearance meant news of import for the house, for if the high-ranking imperial ever socialised for the pleasure of it, Duncan had surely missed the occasion.

Apolleon strode over to Duncan and Paetro and ran a supercilious eye over the princess dancing back and forth across the duelling floor, as though the practice of arms was beyond him. He might have a point there. Apolleon could have most people in the imperium legally executed with just a word – no sweat required. ‘’Pon my soul, she will tear a muscle if she continues to exert herself so.’

‘She trains to help her forget,’ said Paetro.

‘Better she remembers,’ said Apolleon. His mouth narrowed around the edges. ‘Better if we
all
do.’

‘You have news, my lord Apolleon?’ asked Duncan, guardedly.

‘Oh, I always have that. I am
very
well informed. The tribunal at the Court of the Grass has ruled,’ said Apolleon. ‘Helrena can only join the expeditionary force after proving herself through trial-by-arms.’

‘A trial she may not survive,’ observed Paetro, grimly.

‘Another duel?’ asked Duncan. ‘Does Circae not tire of Princess Helrena sending her cat’s-paws back in coffins?’

‘This is far more significant than a private challenge,’ smiled Apolleon. ‘It will be a public contest, fought for all to see in the arena.’

‘I do not think this is wise,’ growled Paetro.

‘It is not your name that needs reclaiming.’

‘After all I have sacrificed—’

Apolleon raised a hand, cutting him off. ‘I do not gainsay your personal loss, Paetro, but only observe that the emperor doesn’t give a gnat’s piss about your sad, dead soldier girl. One of the seeds of Jaelis Skar’s imperial loins has been snatched, the chastening cherry on the cake after the empire’s humiliation at the hands of a motley band of barbarian slave miners. Such a public humiliation deserves an equally public punishment squadron dispatched to extract revenge against those responsible.’

‘And Helrena deserves to lead that punishment squadron,’ said Duncan.

‘Deserves?’ Apolleon snorted. ‘I can tell that you weren’t born to the imperium, my young barbarian buck. Nobody in the empire gets what they deserve; only what they can take and hold.’

‘I thought you were fixing matters with the court?’ said Paetro.

‘The magister in charge of the challenges tribunal has two daughters due to come out next season, and an ambition to have the women installed in the imperial harem, their bellies swelled with potential heirs to the diamond throne before Emperor Jaelis grows any sicker. Let’s just say that Circae currently has more influence on his state of mind than my coercions. If Helrena wishes a high command position on the punishment force, she will have to fight for it.’

‘And who would challenge her right to hold that position?’ asked Duncan.

‘I understand it will be Baron Machus.’

‘He’s bait,’ said Duncan.

‘Of course,’ said Apolleon. ‘Circae wants the princess to fight – what better way than dangling Helrena’s treacherous cousin in front of her nose to goad her into accepting.’

‘And you
still
want her to accept?’ said Paetro.

‘I
need
her to,’ said Apolleon. ‘Can you not hear the sound that carries in the air, simple Paetro? It is the sound of this house’s wealth draining. If Princess Helrena doesn’t secure a commission in the punishment squadron, she will never regain the face she lost during the revolt. Her house will suffer a death of a thousand cuts over the next couple of years; every enemy emboldened to snatch at her territory in the capital and the provinces and the sky mines. But if Helrena fights and wins, if she takes the position and returns victorious, then she will have a good chance at Jaelis’s throne after he is gone.’

‘She’ll fight,’ said Duncan. ‘Not for the throne – but as a mother who wants her daughter back.’

‘How sweetly naive,’ Apolleon grinned. ‘But so long as she fight and wins, she can be doing it to collect spare silver from the arena’s betting touts for all that I care. But fight she will. The alternative will not be pleasant, for
anyone
.’ He left the threat lingering in the air like a bad stench from a sewer.