malice many a time and hate in all its colours. I’ve seen the gleam in the torturer’s eyes, the sick-light, but even there was the comfort of interest, the slightest touch of salvation in shared humanity. He might have the hot irons, but at least he was curious, at least he cared how much it hurt.
“I can give you Gelleth,” I said.
Could I? Probably not. Of all Ancrath’s neighbours, Gelleth stood unassailable above the rest. The Lord of Gelleth probably had better claim to the Empire Throne than Father did. In the Hundred, Merl Gellethar had few equals.
I found my hand on the hilt of my dagger. I itched to draw the tempered steel, to lay it across his neck, to scream at him, to bring some heat into those cold eyes.
“I’ll need an army,” I said. “Castle Red won’t fall easy.”
“You will have the Forest Watch.” Father spread his hands over the throne’s armrests and leaned back, watching.
“Two hundred men?” I felt my fingers tighten on the pommel of my knife. Two hundred men against the Castle Red. Ten thousand might not be enough.
“I’ll take my brothers too,” I said. I watched his eyes. No flicker in the winter, no start at “brother.” The weakness in me wanted to speak of Will. “You’ll have Gelleth. I will give you the Castle Red. I’ll give you the head of the Lord Gellethar. Then you’ll give the heathen to me.”
22
So we sat, Makin and I, at a table in The Falling Angel tavern with a jug of ale between us, and the song of a cracked-voice bard struggling to be heard against the din. Around us the brothers mixed with the lowest of the Low Town, gaming, whoring, and gorging. Rike sat close at hand, his face buried in a roast chicken. He appeared to be attempting to inhale it.
“Have you even seen the Castle Red, Jorg?” Makin asked.
“No.”
Makin looked at his ale. He hadn’t touched it. For a few moments we listened to the sound of Rike crunching chicken bones.
“Have you?” I asked.
He nodded slowly and leaned back in his chair, eyes on the lanterns above the street-door. “When I was a squire to Sir Reilly, we took a message to the Lord Gellethar. We stayed a week in the guest halls at the Castle Red before Merl Gellethar deigned to see us. His throne-room puts your father’s to shame.”
Brother Burlow staggered by, belly escaping over his sturdy belt, a haunch of meat in one hand and two flagons in the other, foaming over his knuckles.
“What about the castle?” I could care less about a pissing contest over throne-rooms.
Makin toyed with his ale, but didn’t drink. “It’s suicide, Jorg.”
“That bad?”
“Worse,” he said.
A painted whore, hennaed hair and red-mouthed, backed into Makin’s lap. “Where’s your smile, my handsome?” She had good tits, full and high, pushed into an inviting sandwich in a bodice of lace and whalebone. “I’m sure I could find it.” Her hands vanished into the froth of her skirts where they bunched around Makin’s waist. “Sally will make it all good. My handsome knight doesn’t need no boys to keep him warm.” She flicked a jealous glance my way.
Makin pitched her to the floor.
“It’s built into a mountain. What shows above the rock are walls so high it hurts your neck to look up at the battlements.” Makin reached for his ale and fastened both hands around the flagon.
“Ow!” The whore picked herself up from the wet boards and wiped her hands on her dress. “You didn’t have to do that now!”
Makin didn’t spare her a glance. He turned his dark eyes on me. “The doors are iron, thick as a sword is long. And what’s above the ground isn’t but a tenth part of it. There’s provisions in those deep vaults to last years.”
Sally proved to be a true professional. She transferred her attentions to me, so smooth you’d think I’d been the object of her affection all along. “And who might you be, now?” She came in close, running her fingers into my hair. “You’re too pretty for that grumpy sell-sword,” she said. “You’re old enough to learn how it works with girls, and Sally will show you.”
She had her mouth close to my ear now, sending tickles down my neck. I could smell her cheap lemon-grass scent, cutting through the ale stink, and the dream-weed on her breath.
“How many men would it take? To bring the place down around Lord Gellethar’s ears?” I asked.
Makin’s eyes returned to the lanterns and his knuckles went white around his flagon. Somewhere behind us Rike gave a roar, quickly followed by the splintering sound of a body meeting a table at high speed.
“If you had ten thousand men,” Makin said, raising his voice above the crashing sounds. “Ten thousand men, well supplied, and with siege machines, lots of siege engines, then you might have him in a year. That’s if you could keep his allies off your back. With three thousand you might starve him out eventually.”
I caught hold of Sally’s hand as it slipped across my belly to the buckle of my belt. I twisted her wrist a little, and she came front and centre, sharpish, with a high-pitched gasp. She had green eyes, like Katherine’s but more narrow and not so clear. Under the paint she had fewer years on me than I first thought, she might be twenty, certainly no more.
“And what if I found us a way in? What then, Brother Makin? How many men to take the Castle Red if I opened us a door?” I spoke to Sally’s face, inches before mine.
“The garrison stands at nine hundred. Veterans mostly. He sends his fresh meat to the borders and takes it back when it’s been seasoned.” I heard Makin’s chair scrape back. “Which son of a whore threw that?” he yelled.
I kept the whore’s wrist turned. I took her throat in my other hand and drew her closer. “Tonight we’ll call you Katherine, and you can show me how it works with girls.”
Some of the dream-haze left her eyes, replaced by fear. That was all right with me. I had two hundred men and no secret door into the Castle Red. It seemed only right that somebody should be worried.
23
My book shifted again. I say “my” book, but in truth it was stolen, filched from Father’s library on the way out of the Tall Castle. The book lurched at me, threatening to snap shut on my nose.
“Lie still, damn you,” I said.
“Mmmgfll.” Sally gave a sleepy murmur and nestled her face in the pillow.
I settled the book back between her buttocks and nudged her legs slightly further apart with my elbows. Over the top of the page I could see the faint-knobbed ridge of Sally’s spine tracing its path across her smooth back to be lost in the red curls around her neck. I wasn’t convinced that the text before me was more interesting than what lay beneath it.
“It says here that there’s a valley in Gelleth they call the Gorge of Leucrota,” I said. “It’s in the badlands down below the Castle Red.”
The morning light streamed through the open window. The air had a chill to it, but a good one, like the bite on ale.
