His own vehemence shocked him, and made him a little ashamed. He glanced uncomfortably around. Many in the mass of riders were looking at him. All, at least, had the grace to turn away when his own gaze fell upon them. It was unwise, Gryvan knew, to flaunt his anger-his confusion, if he was honest-so brazenly, before so many eyes, but his grip on his emotions grew daily less sure. They tore their way up through him, every setback bringing them closer to boiling over. He imagined them as some pack of beasts clawing at his innards, consuming him from within.
A hundred of his warriors, led by Kale and the rest of his Shield, surrounded him. He was within the walls of his own impregnable, wondrous city. Yet despite all of this, Gryvan felt exposed. Assailed. The faces of his people, who thronged the streets this morning and watched his passing from every window and doorway, seemed inimical to him. But he could no longer tell whether that was their true character, or whether he only painted them with his own bitter bewilderment at the course of events.
“The Captain of your Shield is quite right, sire,” Mordyn Jerain said, settling his own horse into step with Gryvan’s. “The city’s mood is fragile. Caution would be wise.”
“They set a dozen fires,” Gryvan hissed, wrestling his voice into submission. “Ten people dead, I hear. Someone thinks they can torch my city with impunity. Well, I’ll see their handiwork. And then I’ll see them, whoever they are, broken on wheels, and spitted on stakes and have their heads rolled in the dirt at my feet.”
“Quite so. I wish we could have spoken before riding out, though. There is much I wanted to discuss with you today. Had you not been already mounted when I reached the palace…”
“Now, suddenly, you want to talk? Well, it can wait an hour or two yet. Gods, does this not sicken you with fury? How can you be so unmoved? We made this city what it is together, you and I. It’s your child as much as mine.”
“Children heal quickly, sire.”
Gryvan heard-or imagined, he could not be sure which-dismissive insolence in that reply and twisted in his saddle to snarl at his Chancellor. But Mordyn was looking away, angling his head up towards the rooftops.
“What’s that?” Mordyn muttered.
Gryvan’s anger faltered. He crushed the reins in his frustrated hands. But there was a sound, clattering in over the tiled roofs. Gryvan listened for a moment or two, teasing it out from amongst the rattle of hoofs on cobbles. He did not know what to make of it at first. Its nature was elusive, as if it both belonged and did not belong in the city. Then he had it. Riot. Mob.
“Swords,” he cried at once. He bared his own blade.
Kale was riding towards him, shouting at the lines of warriors as he came.
“You should turn back, sire,” the shieldman said to his Thane, quite calm. “There is disorder up ahead.”
“No,” said Gryvan flatly. In this, suddenly, he found an answer to all the tumultuous ire that had been building in him for so long. His body knew what kind of release it required, and already his heart was pounding in anticipation. He dug his heels into his horse’s flanks and the great beast sprang forward.
A crowd was surging through a little marketplace. It tore at shuttered windows, rendered barrels, stalls, even an old abandoned wagon, down to fragments of wood, and then sent that debris flying up in a cloud of useless missiles. It surged around the well at the centre of the square, and crushed its human bodies against the stone parapet. It overturned a massive watering trough and broke in the door of a long-empty hovel.
Down upon this ravening beast, the High Thane’s hundred warriors fell like thunder. Gryvan himself was in the midst of the storm, seized by a bloodthirsty rage. He and his father, and his grandfather before that, had made this city and its people all that they now were. That there should be arson, that mobs should rampage through the streets-these things were an affront to the Haig line. They wounded him as surely as any blow to his own flesh. He would wet the streets of his wondrous city with the blood of those who offered such grievous offence.
Gryvan’s sword rose and fell. He felt the shiver of its impact upon bone tingling up his arm. He felt the breaking of bodies that went down beneath his huge horse. A thousand voices, crying out in anguish, or anger, or pain, or terror, washed over him and he revelled in the fierce noise. He cut and slashed and barged his way to the heart of the square. A youth was standing on the rim of the well, lashing out with a length of wood. Gryvan cut his legs from under him, sent him tumbling back and down into the dark, stone-clad gullet.
The crowd fell away beneath the onslaught. What the city’s Guard had been unable to quell, the hundred trained warriors on their warhorses snuffed out quickly and brutally. The passions that had burned in the breasts of the rioters twisted into terror. They scattered, and the riders went after them and cut them down in side streets and doorways. Gryvan sat astride his mount, sword still naked in his hand, surrounded by gore and corpses.
Kale dismounted and tore something from the neck of one of the bodies. He held it up to the High Thane.
“Most of them are Craftsmen, sire. Apprentices, at least.”
He dropped the clasp into Gryvan’s outstretched palm. It bore the impressed image of a tiny hammer and scales.
“Goldsmith,” Gryvan murmured. He was weary now. Drained.
“Yes.” Kale nodded. “Many bear the same badge, or that of other Crafts. A number of their buildings were amongst those burned last night. They seek those responsible, perhaps.”
“And they think that gives them leave to run rampant through my city?” Gryvan growled.
“There are too many who think they need no longer ask our leave to do anything,” Mordyn Jerain said, coming-now that the slaughter was done-to his master’s side. “The world ever seeks to test the will of great men. Now is the time of your testing.”
“And you’ve a thought on how I should meet it. Is that it?”
Mordyn Jerain dipped his head in knowing assent.
“Very well,” Gryvan said, casting a last, simmering eye over the bodies littering the market square. “All of this must be answered. I’ll hear you.”
“No.” Gryvan shook his head. It was part denial, part disbelief, part astonishment at the thought that what his Shadowhand was saying might be true.
“Yes,” insisted Mordyn quietly. “Have I ever failed you, sire?”
“Not in anything of consequence,” Gryvan muttered.
“Indeed. Then trust me in this: a corruption has entered the heart of your domains. That which threatens to consume us comes not from without, but within.”
Gryvan paced up and down over the thick mottled rug. The beaker of wine in his hand was forgotten.
“Why did you not tell me all of this at once, immediately on your return?” he cried.
“I doubted it, sire. How could I not? Such things strain the sinews of belief. I thought it prudent to conduct certain investigations of my own. Now I have the sad proofs.” The Chancellor unfurled a roll of parchments from a tube at his belt. “Copies of letters I was shown in Anduran, during my captivity. messages the Black Road discovered there. Others I have found for myself since my return. And all sing the same foul melody, sire.”
Gryvan slammed his cup down on an ornate little table. He ignored the manuscripts that Mordyn held out to him.
“I’ll not trust a single word that comes from the mouth of the Black Road,” he snarled.
“A wise precaution.” Mordyn nodded placidly. The tumultuous emotions that raged within Gryvan found no reflection in his Chancellor. There was a calmness about the man that would better suit reports of the weather. “They no doubt take delight in pointing out the rot within our own house. Yet whether or not you choose to trust their intent in sharing their discoveries with me, there is a truth to be discerned. A pattern.”
Gryvan threw himself down into a chair so violently that it rocked back on its legs.
“Conspiracy against me? Against Haig?”
The Shadowhand rolled the parchments up once more and slipped them back into their tube. He set it down beside the High Thane’s discarded wine cup.
“I will leave these for you to examine at your leisure, if you see fit. But yes: conspiracy. The Crafts conspired with the Dornach Kingship, promising to deliver up the Dargannan Blood even as they were trying to buy its future Thane. They urged Lheanor oc Kilkry-Haig to throw off his duties to you, and he in his turn promised them free rein if they could foster war between us and Dornach, and raise him up to be High Thane in your stead.”
“This is insanity,” breathed Gryvan.
“Of a kind,” the Chancellor nodded. “Madness born of hatred and ambition and greed. We have been slowly, quietly betrayed, sire. For many years. Until the Black Road entered the fray, the treacheries were discreet and
