rise, at his side, from the wreckage when the new dawn comes. Your brother will not. He and all his kind, Thanes and Kings and Bloodheirs and Stewards, their time is ending.”
He bent still closer to her ear, so close she could feel his lips brushing her skin.
“Your time is ending.”
“You’re his, aren’t you?” Anyara said. “Bound, like Tarcene. Somehow, he made you his tool. His toy.”
Those fingers on her tightened. She felt the nails digging into her skin, pressing harder on the muscles and the veins beneath. She could no longer tell what was the sound of the mob outside and what the rushing of her own blood, its beating in her head.
“What is happening here?”
Anyara could not move, could not see the doorway, but that voice-light, clear, graceful-was enough to abruptly calm her fear.
Mordyn released his grip upon the side of her neck and stepped away from her. She no longer felt the heat of his breath. Stiffly, cautiously, Anyara levered herself up off the table. One side of her face burned, and she could feel the print of his hand there like a brand; the other ached from the impact with the table. She refused to touch either. She would not give him that pleasure.
Both she and the Chancellor looked towards the door, and towards Tara Jerain standing there, in a gown of surpassing elegance, her hands neatly clasped across her stomach.
“What is happening here?” she asked again. Perfect composure. Not a hint of accusation or displeasure, only bland enquiry.
Anyara glared at Mordyn, but he had already dismissed her from his thoughts. He was moving towards the door, adjusting his sleeves, sweeping back his hair. He paid no more attention to his wife than to Anyara. He brushed past Tara, jolting her shoulder out of the way.
“You will regret that,” Anyara said levelly but loudly to his back.
He paused, already almost lost in the shadows behind Tara.
“I don’t think so,” he said without looking around. The Chancellor laughed, and disappeared into the corridor.
And with his departure, as the muted roar of the riot rose and fell like waves rubbing up against the walls of the palace, Tara’s mask crumbled. Her hand covered her mouth, her brow tightened and creased into grief. Her eyes gleamed with unshed tears.
“My lady,” Anyara said at once, walking quickly towards her, one arm outstretched in a calculated gesture of both sympathy and appeal. “I need your help. Something terrible is happening, to all of us. I know you see that. I know you do.”
Tara said nothing, her mouth, and whatever pain it might have expressed, still hidden behind that smooth hand. But her soft anguished eyes were firmly upon Anyara.
“Take me to the High Thane,” Anyara said. “Please. It’s all I can think of to do, and I can’t do it without your help.”
The Moon Palace was in a ferment. Servants ran hither and thither, every one of them wearing much the same expression of alarm and weary unease. The guards, who seemed to be posted at virtually every door, every junction of passageways, stared with intense suspicion at all who came within sight. A number of them watched with particular narrow-eyed attention as Coinach passed them, but none made any move to intercept him. He was in the company of the Chancellor’s wife, after all.
As she and Tara hastened into the palace’s heart, Anyara noted several ladies of the High Thane’s court rushing along, shepherding young children like a gaggle of geese. All of them were dressed for travel, in hooded cloaks and fur gloves and stout, if refined, boots.
“People are running away,” Anyara murmured.
“Do you blame them?” Tara asked her.
And Anyara could not, in truth. She had seen enough of the city’s condition, during the brief but fraught journey from the Palace of Red Stone, to convince her of the absolute wisdom of leaving its confines. The earlier riot had died down but left its flotsam scattered through the streets. A few bodies. Many burned-out houses and workshops. Heaps of debris-broken pots, roof tiles, shards of wood-strewn everywhere. And fearful faces peering from windows.
Tara had been inclined to turn back when a company of the High Thane’s warriors had ridden at the gallop through a crossroads ahead of them. Anyara had prevailed upon her to continue, though not without some unease of her own. It was all uncomfortably reminiscent of what she had seen at Koldihrve, albeit on a grander scale.
In the distance they had been able to hear fighting. Everywhere there had been the faint but persistent smell of smoke. Coinach’s disquiet had become more and more pronounced, until he too had tried to insist on a return to the Chancellor’s palace.
“We’re no safer there,” Anyara had said sternly, angling her face to ensure he could see the livid bruise already blooming where Mordyn Jerain had struck her. The anguished expression on his face at the sight of it instantly made her feel profoundly guilty. Ashamed of her cruelty. It had been her choice alone to shed his protection.
Now, struggling through the nascent chaos within the Moon Palace, she doubted her insistence on coming here. Not out of any fear for their safety, but because she was beginning to wonder whether any place so self- evidently veering towards panic could exercise enough will and authority to actually control events.
They finally found their way to the chamber of some court official. Anyara was gratified by the fawning deference the man displayed towards Tara, though he was infuriatingly non-committal regarding the prospect of an immediate audience with the High Thane. Tara’s demeanour changed markedly and instantly. She berated the man with stern authority, and he hurried off, suitably chastened, to make the necessary enquiries.
They waited, tense, in that chamber for what seemed a long time. Anyara could tell, from Coinach’s distracted manner and the way he chewed absently at his lip, that he was struggling with himself over his failure to keep her safe from harm. She longed to offer him some comfort, but it was something she did not want to discuss in front of Tara, so she held her tongue and made a point of smiling warmly at her shieldman whenever she caught his eye.
The audience was granted. They were ushered, with all appropriate haste, along high, echoing corridors, to a side room adjoining one of the feasting halls. It was surprisingly sparsely furnished, though the wall hangings were exquisite and the rug one of the most obviously costly Anyara had ever seen.
Gryvan oc Haig sat in a broad dark chair with high arms. There was no other seating. Anyara, Tara and Coinach were forced to stand in a line, on the centre of that luxurious rug. Kale, chief amongst the High Thane’s shieldmen, stood to one side, staring fixedly and pointedly at Coinach. He looked to Anyara like a miserable, surly man.
Tara executed a tidy curtsy for the Thane of Thanes. Anyara copied her, aware that she made the gesture appear entirely graceless by comparison.
“I would have received you in more pleasing surroundings, my lady,” Gryvan growled at Tara, “had you not come in such disreputable company.”
To her credit, the Chancellor’s wife betrayed no hint of discomfiture at such a gruff welcome. Her poise, given the extremity of the distress Anyara knew very well she was controlling, was remarkable.
“The times seem most disreputable, sire.” Tara smiled. “One can’t always choose one’s company as freely as one would wish in such circumstances.”
Anyara ignored the subtle insult. Nothing mattered save inducing Gryvan to listen to what she had to say. Impatience was rampant in her, but that too she strove to ignore and silence.
“I like to think I may choose mine,” Gryvan said. He still had not looked at Anyara. “What is wrong with your hands?” he asked Tara.
She glanced at the discreet bandages that protected the worst of her burns.
“It is nothing, truly. A slight accident, that is all. I can be unaccountably clumsy on occasion.”
Gryvan nodded. He had all too evidently lost interest in the subject as soon as he asked the question.
“We will be brief, sire,” Tara assured him. She kept that smile perfectly in place, and not for an instant did it look anything other than entirely natural and sincere.
Gryvan appeared far from satisfied, but he lapsed into a heavy silence. There were dark, sagging bags of skin under his eyes, Anyara noted. A tremor, perhaps a tic, in his cheek that she had never noticed before. A latent
