and vitriolic abuse. Following her doggedly determined escort, Jaen could hear people crying out for access to the Tower’s food stores, accusing some family or other of riot, clamouring for an immediate sally against the besieging forces of the Black Road. She hunched her shoulders and ducked as she was jostled this way and that. Jagged words teemed about her head like an army of angry wasps.
Entering into the gardens beyond the gate was a relief. Jaen sighed and shook her shoulders. Matters were definitely taking a turn for the worse. She resolved, as she ascended the path towards the Tower, to bring Maira and Achlinn here that very afternoon. The city outside this mute and ancient fastness felt entirely too volatile.
Ilessa oc Kilkry-Haig was waiting, as expected, in her chambers. Jaen was surprised to find Ilessa’s son, the Thane Roaric, already there, and in full and heated flow.
“They betray us,” the Thane was saying. “There’s no other description… no other word does justice to their treachery.”
He saw that Ilessa’s attention had been drawn elsewhere, and looked over his shoulder. Jaen, standing in the doorway, dipped her head.
“Forgive me, lady,” she said. “The maid did not tell me you had company. I will wait outside.”
“No, no,” said Ilessa, beckoning Jaen. “I told them to admit you as soon as you arrived. We are almost done here. It will do no harm for you to hear this, anyway.”
She returned her gaze to her son, challenging him to dispute her invitation to Jaen. The Thane seemed unconcerned. Barely interested, in fact. He was entirely focused upon his own furious thoughts.
“Not a single supply ship’s berthed in two days. And the Captain of the last to reach us was quite clear: Gryvan’s forbidden any vessel to dock here, and he’s got his own and Tal Dyreen hulls on the water to make sure his ban is observed.”
“We’ve stores enough to last a while longer,” Ilessa said. Her tone was measured, in contrast to Roaric’s bluster.
“But only a while,” the Thane growled. “And only if we keep them tightly controlled. People will get hungry. They’re already in a foul temper. In every kind of unreasoning, foul temper. I’d have Gryvan by the neck if he was here, High Thane or not.”
He made a fist of his hand, his knuckles whitening as he crushed the life out of an imagined throat.
“Fortunate that he’s not,” Ilessa murmured.
“The day will come. This will all be over eventually, and then I’ll have — ”
“I? I?” snapped Ilessa, her composure cracking a little. “It’s not just you, Roaric. You’re the Blood, all of it, now. Think of it. If you want anything to be left of it when this is all over, you need to see clearly what must be done now, not give yourself over to fancies of future vengeance.”
Roaric frowned but held his tongue.
“If food supplies need to be rationed, so be it,” Ilessa said. “We need to plan for that. And we can still run small boats-smugglers’ boats-along the coast and maybe out to Il Anaron. They might slip through Haig’s fingers.”
“It won’t be enough,” Roaric said darkly. “But you see to it, if you think it worth your time. I’d sooner fight for our freedom than creep about like cowed outlaws. We’re alone now. Black Road on one side, Haig on the other. Both wanting to tear us down, break us down. Well, I won’t permit it! Yes, I’m Thane, if that’s what you want to hear. And I’ll be a Thane, a Thane with a sword in his hand and fire in his belly.”
He brushed past Jaen without acknowledging her presence. Ilessa stared after him. She looked to Jaen like a woman grown accustomed to desperate sadness; still burdened by it, but used to it.
“He turns all his grief into anger,” Ilessa said quietly.
“He has a lot to grieve over. A lot to be angry about.”
“He does.” Ilessa gestured towards a bench in the bay window. It was overlaid with a beautifully woven carpet. “Sit with me.”
Jaen did as she was bid. She had come here, as she did almost every day now, to talk with Ilessa about the needs of the hundreds of Lannis folk caged within Kolkyre’s walls alongside its natives. But that seemed a matter for another time.
“I didn’t know about the ships,” she said. “I can hardly believe Haig would abandon us. Not even abandon us; worse, turn against us. Offer us up to the Black Road.”
Ilessa shook her head in sorrowful astonishment.
“Nor I. Yet here we are. The world’s forgotten whatever sense it once possessed. It’s all like a bad dream from which we can’t wake. Every hand against us. Our own hands against us.” She cocked her head towards the window. “Sometimes, when the wind’s right, you can hear screaming, shouting, even from up here. Our own people, losing their minds, down in the city.”
“It’s not good. I was thinking… perhaps it is time-past time-my daughter and I came into the Tower. If there’s still room for us.”
“Of course.” Ilessa smiled. “I should have insisted upon it before now.”
She pushed back her hair with a slow hand. It smoothed the creases from her brow, just for a moment.
“You must be worried about your husband,” she said.
Worried, thought Jaen. No, that is not the word. There is no word for what I feel. To be at once terrified, stalked by impotent panic, and at the same time calmed by that very impotence. There is nothing I can do for Taim. Wherever he is, he will live or die by his own strength, his own capabilities. And I will be either made whole again, or broken for ever.
“My husband has a habit of surviving,” she murmured. “Of coming back to me.”
“I hope you are right.”
“Hope is all we have, my lady. It fades a little every day, but I cling to whatever shreds of it remain.”
“I wish my men had learned the same habits your husband did,” Ilessa said. The sadness in her words was distant, thoughtful. Cavernous loss and sorrow were there, though, an echoing chamber in the background. Jaen could not bring herself to feel fortunate, but she could recognise her own suffering as that of someone who feared what might happen; Ilessa’s was that of someone assailed by what had already happened, and could never be changed. Which was worse, she could not say.
“Roaric is being consumed, slowly,” Ilessa continued. Still quiet. Still treading a precarious path over a chasm. “Death seems to rule the world now. It walks among us, feeding off the madness. It’s too much for my son. I fear for him. And for all of us. Though I love him with all my heart, I fear where he might lead us.”
Jaen saw then which was worse, for no matter how much had already been lost, how much darkness had already come, there was always more to fear. And once the texture of loss had been learned, it was much easier to imagine its return.
CHAPTER 4
In the twilight of the First Age, when the One Race was drifting towards its final, fatal war against the Gods, they sent an envoy into the high Tan Dihrin. His name was Martanan, and he climbed through storm and snow to the peak of peaks, where the turning sky struck fire from the utmost pinnacle.
There he found, cut into the rock of that summit, the great stone throne he sought, and he knelt before it and called out to the God whose place it was to appear before him. The God came, and filled the throne with his dark form. And his raven companions came, and settled upon his shoulders. Martanan bowed his head at first, for he was afraid to look upon the fell countenance he had called forth. But he was the emissary of his people, and he owed them courage, so he lifted his eyes and spoke.
“We call you He Who Waits, great one, and live in fear of your attention. We call you Death, and your shadow is long, falling across us even in the midst of life. I am sent to ask you this question: why must it be so? Why have you, the immortal Gods, made us so frail and fragile? Why do you keep the boon of life unending only for
