spray. The Inkallim leaped from the horse’s back and erupted through that curtain, reaching for Kanin. It all seemed so slow. Kanin’s mind raced, but his body followed its commands with what felt like glacial lethargy. He leaned back and twisted as the Inkallim came towards him. As the raven’s blade came up, levelling itself, arrowing itself in.
The impact was stunning. It smashed the breath out of Kanin’s chest, sent him sprawling, punched off his feet. His cloak spread and flapped about him. Like wings, he thought foolishly as he hit the ground and slid on his back. The sword had torn across his breastbone, ripping open his chain shirt, lacerating his chest. He could feel his own hot blood on his skin. But it was not a deep wound. By the smallest of margins, the blade’s point had come at too sharp an angle to punch its way through the cage of his ribs. Not dead, was all Kanin thought as he struggled to get to his feet. Not dead yet.
The Inkallim was rising too. His sword was gone, twisted out of his hands. Kanin still had his. He scrambled forward, slithering through the slush, and lashed out at the Inkallim’s ankles. The man leaped above the swing. Then Igris came roaring in and hit him about the waist, embracing him, bearing him down. The two of them rolled, and flailed, and clawed at one another.
Kanin stood over them. Every breath lit bands of fiery pain that encircled his chest. His legs felt loose, his sword terribly heavy in his hand. The Inkallim somehow got a heel into Igris’ groin and half-kicked, half-pushed the shieldman away. Kanin took his chance. He hacked down at the raven’s head, once, twice, until the skull broke and caved in. Again he struck, and again. It took him that long to master himself. Fighting off waves of dizziness, he extended a hand and hauled Igris to his feet. The shieldman was gasping, wild-eyed.
“Well done,” Kanin murmured.
He turned back to the battle, and found it to be over. Dead littered the street. One horse was limping in a trembling circle, another pounding away riderless. It had cost better than thirty lives to bring down those few Inkallim, but it had been done. Townsfolk were beating some of the corpses, pulping them with staffs and clubs. Stiffly, painfully, Kanin sheathed his sword and pressed a hand to his wound. It would need cleaning. There would be fragments of cloth or metal to be picked out of his opened flesh. But it would not kill him.
“Enough,” he shouted. The pain almost choked him, and he had to close his eyes for a moment. When he opened them he spoke more softly, more carefully.
“Enough. We’re done here. Now it’s Kan Avor.”
V
As she moved through the Palace of Red Stone, treading lightly along its polished passageways, Anyara became aware of a low, almost subliminal, sound. At first it seemed to be emanating from the marble, as if it resonated to the beat of some vast drum deep in the earth. But the sound grew slowly more distinct and constant as she reached the northern side of the palace. It took on its own character. There was some great crowd, she realised, out there on the streets beyond these quiet marmoreal precincts, and this was its single voice, built out of a thousand individual cries and shouts, the tramping of many feet, the jostling of bodies one against the other. Built out of the fury of the mob.
The realisation roused more curiosity than fear in her. When she chanced upon an open door, she drifted cautiously through it and into an empty room. Though she could not pretend to feel safe, moving alone through the palace’s intricate passageways, she would have gone mad hiding away in her chambers all day and all night. She had crept out, carefully ensuring that she did not disturb Coinach, who had for once lapsed into an uncomfortable- looking sleep at his watch post in the corridor outside. She thus breached both the Chancellor’s command for her to remain in gentle incarceration, and Coinach’s trust that she would allow him to guard her as he thought necessary. The first breach she cared nothing for; the second she felt was justified, for Coinach desperately needed sleep, and she knew herself how rare and precious were those brief spells of slumber undisturbed by restless dreams.
It was a dining room, but one evidently not used during the winter, for the long table was entirely bare, the fireplace spotlessly clean, the tapestries on the wall concealed behind sheets to protect them from any intrusive light. There were tall windows, but they were shuttered, and the shutters were secured with heavy, ornate copper hooks.
The noise was unmistakable now, even though Anyara had never heard quite its like. A great collective rage. It was an unsettling sound.
“What are you doing here?”
She turned towards that ice-laden voice, its chill daggers cutting through the tumultuous rumble outside. She fought the black fear it loosed in her but could not prevent its rise. She felt herself shrinking, retreating into a corner of her mind.
“I was looking for your wife, Chancellor,” she managed to say.
Mordyn Jerain smiled at her, but he did it with his teeth, not his eyes. He was between Anyara and the only doorway, and that frightened her. She squeezed her hands together in search of a steadying focus.
“You hear it?” the Chancellor said. He came a few paces closer to her. She edged back until she felt the edge of the table against her thighs.
“You hear the mob in full cry? That is the sound of an ending,” Mordyn said, cocking his head. “That is the sound of change. Perhaps you hear it, and you think it a wild thing, beyond control.”
He had an air of contentment, as if he listened to the sweetest and most melodious of music.
“Not so,” he mused, his eyelids languidly drooping. “I made it. It is as much a product of my craft as the crop a farmer harvests is the product of his. Such has ever been my gift. To shape that which others assume cannot be shaped.”
There were, now and again, even through the Palace of Red Stone’s thick walls, and those heavy shutters, individual voices to be heard amidst the otherwise formless noise: jagged rocks briefly exposed and then drowned again by the churning waves. Other than that, the sound could as easily have been born of animal throats as human.
The Chancellor seemed lost in reverie, and Anyara moved to ease herself around him towards the doorway. His eyes at once sprang open and alert, and he reached out and laid a hand on the tabletop, blocking her path with his arm. He was oppressively close to her.
“In truth,” he breathed, “the crop is not quite ready for the scythe. Another day or two. No more, I think. Then the harvest comes.”
“I do not understand such matters,” Anyara said, marshalling all the submissive, compliant girlishness that came no more naturally to her than flight would to a fish. “I have no interest in them.”
“Indeed?” Mordyn said with arched, coldly amused eyebrows. “You are something of a novice when it comes to dissemblance, I see. But do not worry. For now, my interest in you could not be less were you some dim-witted scullery maid. It is given to precious few to exert some influence upon the course of great events; to guide the current, rather than be merely carried along by it. You, my dear lady, are not one of those few. You are a gnat. No, of even less import. You are a common prisoner. Your Blood is extinguished.”
“My brother will — ”
The blow, an open-handed slap that had every strand of the Chancellor’s strength behind it, was so sudden and violent that she reeled. Lights danced across Anyara’s vision. Pain blazed in her cheek with such ferocity that she wondered if he had split it open.
Mordyn came after her before she had a chance to compose herself. He seized her neck with one hand, her flailing arm with the other, and smashed her face down onto the table. He pinned her there and leaned over her, hissing into her ear.
“You are not listening. Your brother? Where is your brother, lady? Hiding somewhere. Cowering like some craven child in a hovel, or a cave. Or dead, perhaps. Do you think he’s dead?”
“Orisian’s not dead.”
“No? It doesn’t matter. He is of no consequence. Less even than you. Do you understand? Entirely, utterly of no consequence. None of them are. The day of Thanes enters its twilight. They will pass. They will fall. Another power is coming, and it will rule in their stead.”
“Let go of me!”
“No. Listen. I have seen, and I understand, what is coming. I am a part of it, and I will be one of those to
