to hold a manacled man; iron-tipped whips and flaying knives. Though his mind cowered in disbelieving horror, he denied them the words-the confession-they desired.
They tore his clothes from him. They ripped his finery into pieces and cast it into braziers. They cut away his hair with knives, so roughly that some of it tore from his scalp, and he felt blood on his head.
Though he knew nothing would come of it, he begged them to think again, to turn aside from this terrible course their Thane had set them upon. There was only hatred in their eyes, only abuse on their lips.
They asked him again to confess his crimes, and those of his people, and those of his King. And he could see how they craved his refusal. They wanted it, above all else, so that they should have the chance to break him. There was something unnatural, excessive in their eager ferocity.
He gave them what they wanted, for he would not betray his people with falsehoods. He would not invite the consequences such lies would have. His captors turned gladly to the tools that hung on the walls about them, that rested against stands and waited in the seething braziers.
And in time, bloodily, they broke the Ambassador of the Dornach Kingship in that deep and dark place, and he assented to every accusation that was relentlessly put to him. He gave truth to every falsehood the Shadowhand had uttered. And once that truth was given, and his purpose served, the High Thane’s men put a knife into Alem T’anarch’s heart and sent his corpse to be burned on the pyres, in Ash Pit, reserved for the bodies of murderers and thieves and traitors.
IX
Anyara was afraid. She sought for all the old, stubborn determination with which she had learned to resist fear and doubt and grief. But that determination was frayed, almost eaten away like some moth-discovered robe. The fear and hopelessness leaked through it. Her only other defence was distraction, and that she turned to willingly and with all the vigour she could muster.
“Could we steal horses and slip out of the city?” she wondered.
Coinach looked dubious. The two of them were sequestered in her chambers, the door locked from the inside, the shutters closed across the great windows. They conspired by candlelight, though outside it was a bright if cold afternoon.
“Nothing’s impossible,” the warrior said carefully. His doubt was ill concealed.
“There must be Lannis merchants in the city, aren’t there?” she said. “Visiting Craftsmen? Someone who could help us, perhaps smuggle us out.”
“I don’t know. I could try to find out…” He sounded doubtful.
“Yes. I’m forbidden to leave this gilded gaol cell, but you… No one actually said you couldn’t go out into the city, did they?”
“Not that I’ve heard, lady, no. Seems unlikely they’d — ”
“It’s no use anyway,” Anyara said. “What good are we to anyone, running away, sneaking off into hiding like some masterless bandit with a price on his head?”
She clapped her hands together in irritation, and in doing so snapped out the flame of the closest candle. She growled at it, and lit a taper at one of the others to restore it.
“We should be trying to find a way to undo some of this madness,” she muttered, frowning at the wick while she waited for it to take the flame. “Change things, not flee from them. I didn’t come here just to be locked away. If we can’t unpick the Shadowhand’s lies, Orisian, our whole Blood, everything is at risk. We need help.”
“Yes, though Vaymouth is hardly the most fertile ground to search — ”
A hesitant, almost furtive, knocking at the door interrupted them. It startled Anyara. She almost dropped the still-burning taper, but swiftly recovered herself and gently blew it out. Coinach was already moving towards the door.
“Who is it?” called Anyara.
“Eleth, my lady. I have… I have clean bedding.”
Anyara nodded to Coinach, and the shieldman opened the door. The maidservant entered, her arms piled with sheets. She looked curiously from Anyara to Coinach and back again, clearly wondering what kind of business they had been engaged in, locked away together in a darkened room. The suspicion might have amused Anyara once, perhaps embarrassed her, but now she spared it no more than a moment’s thought.
She noticed the change in Eleth at once. Gone were the girl’s open, friendly expression, her casual chatter. She seemed smaller, more withdrawn. That alone Anyara might simply have ascribed to the fraught and fractious atmosphere in the palace, and the change in her own status from tolerated guest to prisoner. But there was more, she sensed. Eleth’s cheeks drooped, her mouth was set in limp misery. She looked as if she had been crying recently.
“Are you all right?” Anyara asked as the maid opened the great chest at the foot of the bed and began putting in the fine sheets, one after another in neat, luxuriant layers.
“Yes, lady,” Eleth murmured, and the fluttering of her words betrayed the lie.
“I’ve not seen you for days. They told me you were sick.”
“Yes, lady.” There were tears there, so close to the surface: a loosely lidded pot simmering towards a cold and sorrowful boil. Anyara toyed absently with the sleeve of her dress, wondering whether to press the matter. She felt a glimmer of concern for the girl, but it was overlaid by other, more urgent, preoccupations.
“Do you know where the Chancellor’s wife is, Eleth?” she asked as the maid softly closed the chest.
“She is in the bath chamber, lady. Ensuring it has been cleaned as it should, I think.”
“I need to talk to her, Eleth. It’s very important. Would you take me to her, please.”
“I am not sure we are supposed to…”
“I only want to talk to her. No harm can come of it. Please, Eleth.”
The door to the bathing chamber was open. As they drew near, a metallic crash and a skittering clatter rang out. The sudden noise, so obtrusively violent amidst the marmoreal quiet of the palace, halted Eleth in her tracks, and had her shrinking away. Whatever troubled the girl, it was pervasive, rendering her delicate.
“Wait here,” Anyara whispered to Eleth and Coinach, and she went alone, cautiously, to the doorway of the chamber.
The bath was set into the floor, its polished stone darkly gleaming. There was a soft, persistent scent of perfume on the air, perhaps in the tiles themselves. Heat washed over Anyara’s face, for there were braziers burning in each corner of the room. One of them lay on its side, its glowing contents fanned out across the floor, a sprawl of fiercely luminous coals. Tara Jerain stood beside it, staring down at her hands.
“My lady?” Anyara said.
Tara did not respond. She seemed fixated, to the exclusion of all else, upon her hands and the angry red welts that were already appearing there.
“My lady?” Anyara repeated. “Is everything all right?”
Slowly, Tara looked up. Her exquisite features had none of their usual lustre. She looked almost plain, as if her beauty had been washed out of her. At first, she gave no sign that she even recognised Anyara. She stared at her blankly.
“What do you want?” she asked at length, blinking like someone waking from sleep.
“I had hoped to talk to you about — ”
“No, no. Not now. I’m sorry.” Tara waved a limp hand as she spoke. Desolate sadness; weeping, blistering burns laid across her fingers and palm.
Anyara stepped back, reluctantly dipping her head, disappointed to find her intentions thwarted. But Tara spoke again after a moment.
“Wait. Wait. I have… I seem to have burned my hands.”
“Eleth’s here,” Anyara said. “I’ll send her for a healer. For bandages and salves.”
“Yes. Thank you.”
Anyara glanced at Eleth, who nodded and rushed away with evident relief. Turning back into the moist, scented heat of the bathing room, Anyara carefully advanced. Tara’s arms hung loose at her sides now. The spilled charcoal murmured in fiery whispers on the floor. The orange light of those braziers that still stood danced across
