his troubled sleep, but it was seldom comprehensible. When they rested, he would simply sit and stare out across the blasted snowscape. Silent. Lost in memory, or imagining, or thought. Sometimes he would look down at the blunt, bandaged stumps of his wrists. If he despaired at the sight of his maiming, he hid it well.
And now they at last descended. There was still snow, but it was melting quickly. On the lower slopes Eska could see people moving, and further down the valley a little village. Distantly, she could hear the lowing of cattle cooped up in some shed.
“It’s done, then,” she said to Kanin.
And to her surprise he took his arm away from her shoulders and slumped down into the snow and sat there weeping. His face crumpled as thoroughly as would that of any distraught child. Eska stood at a respectful distance and waited. It took a long time.
When he was emptied of it, he looked across to her and lifted his arms from his knees.
“Do you think a man can still be Thane, with…” He could not finish the question.
Eska shrugged.
“I do not know. I saw a man once, in Kan Dredar, who had lost his hand. To a bear, I think. He had a carver make him a wooden one. It was crude. Of little use, and he could not wear it all the time for it rubbed his… skin raw. But he looked whole.”
“Ha. I would settle for that. To look whole. If I had my hands, still all I would hope for was to look whole. Some wounds never close up, no matter how carefully they are tended. But a man need not be whole to be Thane. Come, help me up. Let us see what welcome awaits us.”
*
Anyara stood with Ilessa oc Kilkry on the quayside of Kolglas, watching the crew ready the ship. They worked in silence. The crowd assembled all along the harbour watched in silence. The seagulls wheeled overhead, screeching.
“I am grateful that you came,” Anyara said to the older woman.
“Of course. Our Bloods spring from the same root. And now, it seems, we are greatly in your debt. Your brother’s debt. Of course I came.”
Anyara smiled and nodded her thanks. There was a faint warmth in the sun on her face. It felt like an entirely new thing: a sensation she had never before experienced in all her life. As if it were a new kind of warmth in a new world.
“You must have a great many demands upon your time, though,” she said. “And it cannot have been an easy journey.”
“Are any journeys easy now? And there is too little time, no matter where I am, how hard I labour. Repairs. Rebuilding. Finding food for the unhomed and the orphaned. The Tal Dyreens bring shiploads of grain and require us to empty our treasury in exchange for it. The Black Road still lurks in distant corners of our lands. We will be fighting bandits for years, I think. Many fled into the Vare Waste, many beyond the Karkyre Peaks, where by all rumours’ account they are not welcomed by what remains of the White Owls. Not welcomed at all.”
“And Highfast?”
“It might be again as it was once was. Perhaps. There are some prepared to try. A few. There was a message from one of them-a man called Hammarn-for the na’kyrim… for Yvane. I gave it to her last night. It seemed to please her, though it was difficult to be sure.”
Anyara looked along the quayside a little way. Someone was moving through the crowd, handing out oatmeal biscuits and offering ale. It seemed a strange fragment of normality amidst so much that felt unreal. Impossible.
“Your son…?” she asked quietly.
Dismay perturbed Ilessa’s features, just briefly. She mastered herself.
“Unchanged. Roaric is lost to us, I fear. He moves and breathes, and speaks even at times. But his sense has fled him. He is Thane, but… but the reins must stay in my hands. For as long as I can hold them.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry. Yes. It will not be easy for either of us, I think. The Bloods are not accustomed to the rule of a woman.”
Anyara grunted. “To say the least of it. They will accustom themselves to it in time. But not yet: every day I am asked when I intend to marry and put a Thane on the throne beside me.”
“You should,” Ilessa said, too quickly, too forcefully. It was gentler when she repeated it: “You should. Not to please others, not to silence doubters. Because you will not want to be alone. Not for long. Do not make yourself alone.”
“No,” murmured Anyara. And then asked, “What do you suppose will happen?”
“We can’t know that. We will have to wait and see. And hope we meet it well.”
The crowd at the far end of the harbour shifted and parted, and a small group came through. Yvane, and Coinach, and Taim Narran with his arm about his wife Jaen. That was a good sight, those two in such an embrace. It made Anyara smile. The first time she had smiled today. She was still smiling as her eyes met Coinach’s, and his own lips caught the warmth and reflected it.
“My lady,” her shieldman said, dipping his head respectfully as they drew near.
He took such pleasure in flouting her command to call her by her name. It was a game between them now. A gentle, affectionate game.
Yvane looked the most despondent of all of them. Her gaze was on the lidded clay vase Anyara clutched to her breast. Anyara tightened her grip on the vessel.
“It will soon be done,” she said to the na’kyrim, and Yvane nodded sadly.
“They look to be ready, my lady,” Taim said.
Anyara turned to the long, low boat. The oarsmen were at their posts. The helmsman stood at the tiller. That smile was gone already, but it could not have survived this moment in any case.
“Let’s go then,” she said.
Taim hugged his wife, and kissed her forehead, and whispered in her ear. She touched her hand to his cheek and backed away. The rest of them descended into the corpse-ship.
The oarsmen edged it slowly out of the harbour. Castle Kolglas, standing on its rocky outpost amidst the waves, watched them pass; and Anyara watched it, awash with memories, with regrets and sorrow. The place was still empty, still a ruin. She did not know when-or if-it would be habitable once more.
There was a rare, light wind from the south today, and Anyara was glad of that, for she wanted this outward journey to be a quick one. Once beyond the harbour’s embrace, the single square sail was soon raised, and it flapped and creaked and then caught the wind and tightened, and the prow of the ship began to punch its way through the waves, out into the Glas Estuary.
Anyara sat alone on a bench, with that vase held tight, and closed her eyes. She surrendered herself to the sound of the sea on the hull, the voices of the seagulls that escorted them, the sun on her face. It was not peace, but there was a secret stillness in those sensations she could draw upon.
Dimly, she could hear Taim talking with Ilessa oc Kilkry behind her. Their voices were low.
“And Haig?” Taim was asking.
Ilessa snorted. “Chaos, from what I hear. They lost thousands in the battles, and now they’re fighting Dornach and Dargannan in the south. It’s going badly, evidently. Not that anyone seems to know who is giving the orders. One day I’m told it’s the Crafts, the next someone says Stravan has turned up and taken the throne. Whoever it is, they’re in no position to try to drag Kilkry and Lannis back under their yoke.”
“Perhaps there’s no Haig Blood left at all,” Taim mused.
“There’s Abeh. But they say she lost her mind when her husband was killed, and hasn’t recovered. Foul woman. I’d not wish such… horrors on anyone, but she… no, not even her perhaps. What about the Black Road?”
“Oh, it’s…” Anyara could hear Taim’s shrug. “Mystifying. We had a message from Ragnor oc Gyre himself- meant for Gryvan, but we took it-pledging immediate peace, lasting peace. We questioned the messenger, sent one or two scouts north across the Vale ourselves, and it’s as if the madness hasn’t ended up there, as far as we can tell. The Inkallim have been all but destroyed, but whatever’s left of them is fighting Ragnor, along with half his own people. Horin-Gyre seems to be the only Blood that hasn’t taken up arms against one of the others.”
“Well, it gives us time, at least.”
