fighting with her today. Shraeve would have to die as well as Aeglyss, he realised with new clarity, but not now. Not yet.
“I want to know what happened to my sister,” he said. “There is no shame in such a desire.”
“Shame? No, perhaps not. But it serves no purpose. Mourning is but self-pity. You know it as well as I do.”
Once he had known it. Now, it sounded like a hollow platitude, vindictively crafted by the lips of an enemy.
“Let the dead go, Thane,” Shraeve said. “We will join them soon enough, in the better world.”
Men and women were filing past them into the hall. Leaders from the Gyre and Gaven and Fane Bloods; Lore Inkallim, led by the shuffling, hunched, black-lipped figure of Goedellin; Cannek, who studiously avoided Kanin’s gaze as he settled his two hounds down to await his return from the council.
“It’s time,” Shraeve said, and turned away from Kanin.
He followed her into the musty gloom of the hall. It was empty save for a single table at its centre, lined with chairs. Serving girls-whether brought from the north with the armies or prisoners pressed into service, Kanin could not say-were lighting torches along the walls and setting out beakers of wine and ale and plates. At the far end of the hall, standing by small doors that must lead to the kitchens or other antechambers, were White Owl Kyrinin. They were hateful in Kanin’s sight, and he averted his eyes from them.
One or two of those already seated regarded him with curiosity, perhaps even suspicion, as he took his place at the table. He ignored them. They were nothing to him, these latecomers to the war his family had started. Not one of them had offered his father any support; not one of them had crossed the Stone Vale until they, or their masters, caught the scent of victories already won, and of spoils and glory to be claimed. He clasped his hands in his lap and stared fixedly down at them, watching his fingertips redden as the tension within him tightened its grip.
He heard the wide doors of the hall scrape shut. The last of the daylight was excluded and they were left with the yellow flamelight and the scent of smoke. The servants went out, one by one, past the woodwight sentinels, and a heavy silence descended.
“Where’s the halfbreed?” a man asked at length. Kanin had met him once or twice before, long ago: Talark, Captain of a castle on the southern borders of the Gyre Blood. A relative, by marriage, to Ragnor oc Gyre himself.
“He will join us shortly,” Shraeve said placidly. She had taken her twin swords from her back. They rested in their scabbards against the side of her chair. “He is preparing himself.”
“For what, I wonder?” Cannek asked, almost mirthful, as if some unuttered jest was pleasing him.
Shraeve ignored the Hunt Inkallim. “There are other matters to talk of first. Kilvale. Kolkyre.”
“Food, if you’ve any sense,” Talark muttered irritably. “Half my warriors are starving. Most of my horses have gone into their bellies.”
“All the more reason to keep moving on. Conquest will feed our armies. Every town we take, every village, has stores laid in for winter. That promise, and the strength of their faith must keep them — ”
“They have stores only if they don’t burn them or empty them before we get there,” Talark interrupted her. “And if the farmers and villagers who flee before us haven’t already eaten them.”
“The Battle has arranged for supplies to be brought down through the Stone Vale,” Shraeve replied. “A hundred mules, all fully laden, reached Anduran only two days ago.”
“Mules!” Talark scoffed. “It’s wagons we need, and oceans of them. Not a few mules.”
“Perhaps if the High Thane, your master, gave more than half his heart in support of us, you could have those wagons.”
The Gyre warrior glowered at Shraeve. “It’s difficult to get wagons across the Vale at this time of year. You know that.”
“Indeed. Yet you sit in the hall of a Kilkry-Haig town. It seems we-those who came before you, Talark-have already proved that even the impossible can sometimes be possible. If the will is there. The faith.”
One of the Gaven-Gyre warriors cut short the burgeoning argument by rasping her chair back across the floor and rapping the back of her hand on the table.
“If it’s conquest that concerns you, our time might have been better spent busying ourselves with that task instead of riding all the way back here to indulge in petty disputes. There’s more than enough chaos already, without our absence to help it along.”
“She knows that,” Talark grunted. “She’s got her ravens out there taking charge of everything while we’re dragged back here. This serves no purpose save that of the Children of the Hundred.”
“No purpose?” Shraeve snapped, anger colouring her voice for the first time. “There is only one purpose in any of this. The service of the creed. Raising it up until all the world falls beneath its shadow. None who would dissent from that, none who doubt that the moment has come for all other concerns to be set aside, have any place in this endeavour. There must be unity. That is why we are gathered here now. Not to indulge in dispute, but to end it.”
“Don’t question my faithfulness to the creed,” Talark said, though his tone lacked the steel of conviction.
“There must be unity,” Goedellin murmured. All looked towards him. To Kanin’s eyes, the man looked more frail and weary than ever before. He spoke slowly, heavily, his seerstem-darkened lips sluggish. “There must be unity, and certainty. Doubt is the enemy of faith. Yet these times are… confused. Few things seem as clear as once they did.”
“Success is clarity,” Shraeve said. “It answers all questions.” She was firm, but her manner had shed its confrontational edge. It was good to see, Kanin thought, that the Battle’s confidence and arrogance had not yet become bloated enough to crowd out some vestigial respect for an Inner Servant of the Lore.
“Indeed.” Goedellin nodded. “Indeed.” And then: “Perhaps.”
“When Kilvale falls, all doubt will be undone,” said Shraeve with cold certainty. “When we hold the Fisherwoman’s birthplace, the birthplace of our creed, then the fire will burn brightly in every heart. Nothing will quench it then. None will be able to argue fate’s intent.”
“Oh, there’s always room for argument,” Cannek interjected lightly. “It’s in our nature to be disputatious.”
Kanin groaned inwardly. Why taunt the woman? Why so brazenly flaunt his opposition? But, of course, Cannek was one of those who found such liberation in the Black Road that he feared nothing, found nothing troubling. He would dare anything, and greet the consequences of his daring with equanimity. Such sentiments, once familiar, were beyond Kanin’s reach now.
At the far, gloomy end of the hall, the Kyrinin were moving. One of the doors opened. Kanin held his breath, and sensed the same sudden expectation taking hold of everyone else at the table.
The na’kyrim entered, and whatever feelings had been stirring in Kanin turned to disgust at the sight of him. Aeglyss was a wasted figure, emaciated and gaunt, coming unsteadily forward on the arm of a tall woodwight. The halfbreed’s colourless skin was scabbed and slack. Kanin grimaced.
Yet when he looked about the faces of the others gathered there, he saw entirely different emotions portrayed. A hint of unease now and again, but fascination too. Even Talark watched Aeglyss approach with a pathetic, wide-eyed touch of wonder.
There was an empty chair at Shraeve’s side. Aeglyss settled gingerly into it. He looked so small. Kanin imagined that the halfbreed’s neck would break with only the gentlest of twists. The Kyrinin warrior who had escorted Aeglyss to his place remained standing there, just behind him.
“Must we have woodwights in attendance?” asked Talark, recovering a fragment of his previous antagonism.
“This is Hothyn,” Shraeve said. “He is the son of the White Owl Voice, and leader of the warband that accompanies Aeglyss. His presence is a sign of our strength, not our weakness.”
Yet I saw these same White Owls killing one another in the streets of Glasbridge, Kanin thought. Even in them, Aeglyss could not command the unity you hope for. Not until those who contested it had been killed.
“Do not be distressed by my appearance,” Aeglyss suddenly said. His voice grated in his throat. “I am engaged in a struggle, every day, to contain and to shape what burns within me. It takes its toll. Flesh and bone were not made to bear such burdens. A river that rises in its greatest flood will ruin and break its banks, and so it is
