to the many tasks screaming for their immediate attention. Carel found himself alone in the lee of the castle wall while life continued around him. Gusts of wind swirled across the courtyard, invisible but for the leaves and dust they picked up, but they were all Carel could see. Sweeping over men as though they weren’t there, the twists of wind possessed a strange life of their own that perfectly matched the high, urgent calls of the swifts that Carel normally heard only in the northern summer. There was no God here, not even those spirits too weak to be called Aspects; maybe because of that, Carel was entranced. For months the old warrior had felt himself little more than a puff of wind amidst this great storm.
It wasn’t just those who’d died. Mihn had been a source of quiet strength, and not just to Isak; Vesna was a friend he’d relied on. He’d been set adrift from his life on the wagon-train and he couldn’t imagine how he could ever go back, even after Isak’s death. He’d belonged in Tirah Palace, but with the Ghosts marched away and all his friends dead, Carel had found no real place for him there now. The Chief Steward would always have work for trusted veterans, but he had felt like a ghost, walking corridors that echoed with voices of the departed.
‘Is this place any different?’ Carel asked himself. ‘It’s no more of a home for me — or is home just chasing after that surly brat the rest o’ my life?’ He pulled his jacket a little tighter around his body and glanced down at his left sleeve where his arm had once been. The back of his damn hand was itching again, the hand that’d been tossed into a fire, so Mihn had said.
‘Sure someone told me somethin’ about that,’ he muttered as he stepped back to make way for two porters carrying a crate; the men were careful not to notice him talking to himself — there were many around without livery or uniform who’d take exception to being disturbed by a servant. ‘Was it your mother, Isak?’ he asked himself.
He shrugged and forced himself to start off across the courtyard and back to Kamfer’s Ford. ‘Think it might’ve been, superstitious lot, those caravan folk. First time I met her, too — Horman brought her along when I was still in the guard. Man was so alive then, walking well and made taller by love.’
He stopped by the gate and looked around at the bustling inhabitants — soldiers and clerks for the main, little more than boys, wearing the green-and-gold of the Kingsguard.
‘That’s how I remember your father,’ Carel whispered to the small gusts of wind that followed him across the courtyard, ‘so young he still had fluff on his cheeks, but on his arm was this dark-eyed beauty — she was a wild and wilful one, was Larassa. You got more from her than Horman ever let you know.’
He headed outside, letting the breeze cool his eyes where tears where threatening to form. ‘No memories of your ma; that always hurt you. Now they say you don’t remember me either?’ His thoughts dissolved into memory, the day King Emin had returned to Kamfer’s Ford, not so long after Carel had arrived himself, and met in Major Amber a soul as damaged as his own. When the king returned, Carel had been the first person he’d summoned. He’d hardly expected to meet the man again, but a pair of Kingsguard had hustled him all the way to a private meeting.
Surprise had melted into shock and sick disbelief when he was presented to the King of Narkang. The man had been full of worry, the stink of it filling the room, leaving Carel fearful for his few remaining friends. But to learn that Isak was alive- The king’s words had robbed him of the ability to stand; the king’s new bodyguard had had to half-carry him to a chair.
But the grief at Isak’s death, still eating at Carel’s guts, was doubled at what he heard then: his boy, dragged out of Ghenna, scarred and scared and traumatised — Carel’s head had already been reeling when the final punch came, driving the wind from his lungs, emptying his stomach and leaving black stars of pain bursting before his eyes. Remembering that moment even now forced him to stop by the road and drop to his knees, retching, as his heart threatened to burst.
‘ Carel, I’m sorry, but there’s more,’ the king had said. ‘ He- ’ For a moment even the King of Narkang had been lost for words. ‘ His mind was hurt, Carel. The pain of Ghenna was too much for him. The witch of Llehden had to take memories from his mind to save what was left. He — Isak — he doesn’t remember you. He will not know you if he sees you again. Carel, I’m sorry, but you are lost to him. ’
It wasn’t far, but it took Carel a long time to reach the town, lost as he was in his memories. He found himself resting on the swordstick he used to support himself more often these days. He only caught himself at the river, when the click of the stick’s metal tip on the bridge woke him from his thoughts. Carel stared at the stick, struck by a sudden urge to throw it into the river.
‘You’ll have to do better than that,’ a woman called.
Carel turned and peered through the low light at the speaker. ‘Ardela?’
‘If you’re going to pitch yourself off, best find somewhere higher,’ the former Hand of Fate advised, stepping lightly over to him. She was dressed in men’s clothing as usual, but judging by her battered brigandine and black breeches worn over high boots, this time she’d looted the tent of some Brotherhood man. Short, unruly curls of dark black hair poked out from beneath an ancient wide-brimmed hat that Carel guessed would make the king laugh.
He looked down at the river, some twelve feet down below. ‘You could be right, but I was more thinking of takin’ my life back from this damn thing.’
‘Your swordstick?’
‘I keep finding myself putting my weight on it,’ he admitted. ‘It’s turning me into an old man.’
‘That ain’t the stick, old man — anyways, not as if you’re one o’ those wrecks shuffling around with their white collar stained so bad by wine, folk won’t believe they were ever in the Ghosts.’
Carel straightened up automatically. He was certainly more grey-haired than in his army days, but it had been the loss of his arm that ended his fighting career, not his age. ‘I’m not so old as that.’
‘True,’ Ardela conceded, ‘but any fool can see the weight on your shoulders, so maybe the stick’s not so bad an idea.’
‘Since when did you find such wisdom? Come with the tattoos, did it?’
Ardela automatically looked down at the circles on her palms. They were recently done, and the slow way, as she’d not been present after the battle. ‘I think that’s experience, not wisdom. There are times I’ve needed a stick too.’
Carel looked the muscular young woman up and down. ‘Somehow I find that hard to picture.’
‘Aye, well, I’d have said the same about Legana. First time I met her I thought she was just some mad blind woman out in the forest — a long way from the Hand of Fate I’d heard was the best of us,’ Ardela said with fierce pride. ‘She walks with a stick now; that’s not so much a ruse as the blindfold she uses to shade her eyes, but it doesn’t mean she’s so weak as all that. Any man here’ll come off worst against her, I promise you that.’
‘I’ll not be the one to test her,’ he said, forcing a smile, ‘but I like the thought o’ not being entirely useless. So how does it feel, to walk as silently as the Grave Thief?’
‘No different yet, not till Legana’s back. The magic to link us comes from her; these tattoos are mostly to make the job easier for her; at least that’s what Nai says. Doing it all from scratch, she’d need Mihn there every time and that ain’t so practical for a sisterhood. With the tattoos done and a brand ready, the God part of her can put in the magic easy enough.’
‘Brand?’
Ardela grinned, reminding Carel more than a little of Isak. White-eyes didn’t enjoy pain, he knew that, but the prospect was enough to animate the savage fighter within them and Ardela looked no different there.
‘Aye, that “heart” rune they all got on their chests — came from Lord Isak, I’m told, but it’s the pain of the tattoos and the branding that opens the path for the magic. Don’t understand it much myself, but given some of the shit I’ve seen mages do it makes sense.’
Carel hesitated. ‘So it’s a link to Isak too? To Mihn, to Legana, to Xeliath too, if she’d still been alive?’
‘Guess so, why?’
‘Come on.’ And without bothering to explain, Carel set off to the small compound on the eastern edge of the original town, the large stone house and a pair of barns which had been appropriated by those priestesses and Hands of Fate who’d answered Legana’s call in search of a new purpose. The original owner had died in the Menin advance; King Emin had been glad to offer his new allies the space to make their own. Carel guessed it housed a hundred or more of the sisterhood, a good dozen of whom had been priestesses of the Lady.
The compound was surrounded by a wicker fence the height of a man, and armed women stood on guard at each of the gates. The guard stepped in front of Carel well before he reached it, her spear lowered enough to force him to stop or be impaled upon it. The Farlan veteran didn’t break stride but struck with surprising speed, battering the spear aside with his stick, then stepping inside her guard, he turned into her blow as she struck at him with the
