Winterbirth (54 page)

'Supplicants were a thing of the temples we dispensed with long ago,' said Mordyn.

'Petitioners, if you prefer,' smiled Torquentine. 'But men must find something to worship once their Gods abandon them. It is in our natures to make temples of the strangest places, even if it is not Gods that inhabit them.'

'Mere mortal that you are, there is nevertheless a great deal of you for men to abase themselves before,'

Mordyn acknowledged. 'I dare to hope I stand more highly in your affections than a mere petitioner at some altar, however.'

'Ah, affection. It does not become a man to dispense his precious stocks of that commodity too freely.

But what need could you have of my humble affection in any case, honoured Chancellor? You have the love of the great and the noble to warm your heart should it grow cold. In any case it was, as likely as not, your gold that paid for the new covering of my bench. You may treat it as roughly as you wish.'

'I cannot tarry long,' said Mordyn. 'There is but a single item I wished to discuss.'

Torquentine raised a fat arm in exaggerated distress. 'Such brevity, and I have not even had the chance to offer you any refreshments yet.'

Mordyn suppressed the urge to smile. Torquentine enjoyed the sound of his own voice, and gave a passable impression of a buffoon.

'I have a small task for you, Torquentine. Nothing too testing, for a man of your capacities.'

'I am rigid with curiosity,' said Torquentine in a tone of studied disinterest.

'Gann nan Dargannan-Haig. Cousin to Igryn. Do you know him?'

'Of him, of him. An empty vessel, like most of his family. A mouse burdened with the ambition of a rat; overfond of drink and of whores, and pox-ridden to boot. Thinks he has the makings of a Thane. And lacks the sense to recognise himself as a tool of the Goldsmiths, of course. But then you will know all of that already, Chancellor.'

'Indeed,' Mordyn nodded. 'You summarise the man. Well, worthless though his life has been, I am resolved that he should be given the chance to redeem himself, by dying a useful death. I would not suppose to tell you your business, but I thought perhaps a tavern brawl? Or expiry from overindulgence in the pleasures of some whorehouse?'

Torquentine's eye narrowed a fraction. It was a tiny gesture, but Mordyn drew satisfaction from the fact that he had surprised his host. Only once before had he asked Torquentine for a death, and that had been a lowly brothelmaster who tried to blackmail one of Mordyn's clerks. Gann nan Dargannan-Haig was a different kind of victim.

Striking at one who was both a member of a ruling family — albeit a dishonoured one - and a possession of one of the most powerful Crafts was a bold move, but the Chancellor was satisfied it was worth the risk. Even if they believed it to be no more than bad luck, his loss would be a setback for the Goldsmiths; a few words in the right places would ensure that they suspected, but could not prove, the hand of the Moon Palace behind the deed. If Lammain the Craftmaster had half the sense Mordyn credited him with, he would recognise it for the warning it was.

'Nothing too testing, you say,' mused Torquentine, 'yet you ask a good deal, Chancellor.'

Mordyn said nothing. Torquentine would not refuse this commission. The benefits of the Chancellor's patronage were great, and Torquentine's reach was long and discreet enough to do the deed without any risk to himself.

'Very well,' said Torquentine. 'I shall deal with the luckless Gann. The world will hardly suffer from his loss. Imagine: at this very moment he probably lies sated in the arms of some woman, his dreams all of pleasure and ease, and here we sit deciding to put an end to him.'

The man's voice faded, and his one eye fluttered and half-closed. After a moment he sighed and returned to himself.

'Such are the vagaries of fortune,' he breathed. 'A boon in return, though, dare I hope? This is no small request you make of me, so perhaps a little something in addition to the usual payment?'

The Chancellor raised his eyebrows quizzically. The rules he and Torquentine played by were well established. He would prefer to avoid any departure from them.

'Gann is not some street urchin, after all,' Torquentine smiled. 'Snuffing out his candle will require care, planning. It will be a complicated effort.'

'What is it you want, Torquentine?' enquired Mordyn, lacing his voice with a hint of irritation.

The great man on the cushions raised his own eyebrows in turn. It made the scar across his face stretch alarmingly.

'Well, in truth I could not say. Perhaps we could delay the resolution of that question until such time as the answer is more apparent. I imagine a solution will present itself before long. They usually do.'

'You seek to put me in your debt, Torquentine,' the Chancellor said levelly.

'Oh, come now, let us not speak of debt. We make a bargain, you and I. It is merely that your half of it remains, for the time being, a little . . . ill-defined.'

'Done,' Mordyn said as he rose to his feet. He heartily disliked the idea of making open-ended promises to the likes of Torquentine, but now hardly seemed the time to argue over trifles. He was the Shadowhand, after all, and promises were easy things to break. 'I should return. My wife will be expecting me.'

'Ah, the divine Tara. She of such famed perfection. You cannot imagine how it pains me that I should have to rely only upon rumours of her beauty and never set eyes upon it for myself.' Torquentine sighed and cast a glum eye over the walls of his chamber as he caressed his oceanic stomach. 'To think I have been incarcerated in this cellar for so long, and all for the sake of an ill-disciplined love of nourishment.'

To hear his beloved wife spoken of thus by such as Torquentine sent a mild shiver of repugnance down Mordyn's spine as he made to leave. A passing thought held him in the doorway.

'Have you any word out of Lannis-Haig?'

'Lannis-Haig, Lannis-Haig. Barbarians up there, you know. No appreciation for the finer things in life.

But what word is it you seek?'

'Whatever may have fallen into those huge ears of yours,' muttered Mordyn. He would not usually enquire about such matters in this place, and already half-regretted the question. Torquentine's expertise lay in the rumours of marketplaces and the doings of thieves and brigands. Mordyn had other means of following the course of grander events, though they were not serving him as well as he would wish. He was tired of being surprised by news from the Glas valley.

'Well, I've little to offer that will not already have reached your own capacious ears, I should imagine,' said Torquentine, 'and half of it's rantings, of course. The Black Road rules in the valley once again; only until our esteemed High Thane deigns to flex his muscles, as all right-thinking folk would tell you.

Lheanor's hiding away in his stick of a tower in Kolkyre, mourning his dead son. Croesan's dead too, some say, and captured others.'

'And the rest of Croesan's family? Dead?'

Torquentine shrugged. It was an eye-catching gesture, sending ripples through his jowls.

'Or as good as. Yet, what was it I heard? Kennet, the senile one in Kolglas: they found his body after the woodwights and the ravens were done with his castle, but never his children's. I forget their names.'

'Orisian and Anyara,' Mordyn said absently.

'Indeed. No sign of them, although from what I hear half the bodies were well-roasted, so who could be sure?'

After the Chancellor had gone, Torquentine sat quite still and quiet for a few minutes, furrows denting his sweat-sheened brow. At length, he tugged at a silken cord that hung from the ceiling. A bell rang in the building above. It brought Magrayn down from her post. He beckoned her to approach, and when she was within reach he laid a hand upon her disease-ravaged face.

'Sweet Magrayn,' he smiled as he ran a fat finger perilously close to the wound that had eroded much of her nose. She returned the smile.

'Whisper in some ears for me, beloved,' said Torquentine. 'Cast out some bait. I want to know what has become of every member of the Lannis-Haig line. The Chancellor seems curious on the subject, and where a Chancellor's curiosity leads, there is often some profit to be found.'

As the Chancellor made his way back through the shadowy lanes and alleyways, his guardians dogging his footsteps, he was preoccupied. An instinct deep in his guts, born of long years of reading the signs, whispered to him of storms gathering. Events were taking on an unpleasantly chaotic, unpredictable character. Such times could be crucibles of opportunity, and thus welcome, but they were seldom gentle on a man's nerves. Lannis-Haig should not have crumbled so quickly. And those children of Kennet nan Lannis-Haig's: what had become of them, if they were not dead with their father in Kolglas? It might complicate matters if there was some orphaned runt of a boy running around trying to salvage something from the wreckage of the Lannis Blood. That was exactly the kind of situation Aewult would mishandle, preening himself at the head of his precious army.

Mordyn strove to set the thought aside. There was no knowing the truth of any of this for the moment.

All would become clear soon enough. But still, he could not shake a sense of foreboding. He had a powerful urge to be in Tara 's arms, to take comfort from her familiar, intoxicating charms. He lengthened his stride and hastened back towards his Palace of Red Stone .

THE MORNING IN the Car Criagar was bright and crisp and clear, as brazen as if no day there ever started differently. All through the night the winds had raged around the mountain tops, whipping snow and sleet over the rocks. The storm had blown itself out before dawn, calmed by the approaching sun.

Standing on the wide ledge outside the entrance to Yvane's bolt-hole, Orisian gazed across the ruin-veined landscape before him. On days such as this, couched in the grandeur of the mountains, arrayed beneath a broad, blue sky, the city must have been a glorious sight when it lived. Whoever its inhabitants had been, they must have been stirred by the marvellous conspiracy of sky and rock that surrounded them.

Rothe was crouched down at Orisian's side, trying to sharpen his sword with a whetstone Yvane had found for him. His efforts were punctuated by occasional, almost inaudible, curses at the inadequacy of the little stone. Varryn and Ess'yr were down below, cautiously scouting through the closest of the ruins.

There had been no sign or sound of intruders in the long hours they had spent in the cave, but neither of the Kyrinin seemed reassured. Despite their reticence and restraint, Orisian suspected they would be as glad as anyone to leave this place. The only question that remained was whether Yvane would accompany them. The
na'kyrim
had gone off some time ago, promising to return with supplies for their journey.

Anyara came to stand beside Orisian.

'A strange place,' she said.

'It is,' he agreed. 'It's amazing. I wish Inurian was here to see it. He could have told us more about it, I expect.'

'Yes,' said Anyara softly. She looked down at her hands, loosely clasped before her. 'I miss him very much. I know I never spent as much time with him as you did, but after Winterbirth ... he did his best to look after me.'

'He always did that,' Orisian said. 'You, Father, me; he looked after all of us, in different ways. You think you know how important someone is, but it's never real until they're gone.' He shook his head disconsolately. 'I thought I knew him well, you know. But with Ess'yr, Highfast, Yvane ... I feel like I know less about him now than I did a month ago.'

'You know the most important thing: that he cared for you. That he cared for us all.'

Orisian narrowed his eyes, staring into the distance.

'He told me not to wish for things I couldn't have, but how can I not? I'd change everything if I could.

Everything, right back to ... I want to see our father again. See him the way he was when everyone was alive. Is it so bad to wish for something like that?'

Anyara put an arm about his shoulders. Grief was a dangerous territory for the two of them to share.

Orisian always feared that if he or Anyara let the other see a fraction too much of the sorrows they had borne, neither would be able to hold back the rest.

'I am afraid, Orisian.'

It was not something he could ever remember her saying before. The Fever had taken her to the very edge of the Sleeping Dark; she had once come within moments of drowning in the harbour of Kolglas ; still further back, Orisian had a memory of watching her fall from high in a tree outside the town, bouncing and crashing through lower boughs on her way down. Yet she had never spoken of fear. He had learned, so young that he knew it in the same way he knew the trees would lose their leaves in autumn, that fear did not touch Anyara. Now that knowledge seemed, like many other things, an obviously childish thought to be set aside.

'Afraid of what?' he asked.

Anyara almost laughed. 'You choose,' she said. Then: 'Dying. Being alone. You, me, Rothe — we only have each other now.'

'And we will not lose each other. But there may still be others, anyway. We have to hold on to that hope.'

'Spoken like a true Thane,' Anyara said. He looked at her sharply, to find a sad smile upon her face.

'Well, you are, aren't you? You must be.'

'Oh, Anyara, I hope not.'

She squeezed him tightly, all of a sudden the elder sister once more.

'If you are, you will be a good one,' she said, releasing him from her grasp.

He looked at her. 'Good or bad, I will have to try, won't I? All my wishes are only wishes. I wouldn't have chosen any of this — none of us would - but we are here nevertheless. If there is no one else, I will have to try.'

She took his hand in hers and they stood together like that for a little while, brother and sister side by side, looking out over the wasteland where the ruins lay silently beneath the winter sun.

When Yvane returned, she brought little deerskin packets of food, walking staffs and fur strips to bind around their boots.