Here was someone all fluid grace and natural warmth.
“Sit, sit,” he said to Anyara, gesturing towards chairs. “The High Thane wants to talk with us.”
Watching him warily, Anyara settled into a seat opposite Gryvan. Tara Jerain, she noticed, was staring at her husband, rapt. Her face did not seem to be able to decide between unease and relief, as if she did not trust what her eyes and ears told her.
“You too,” Mordyn said gently to her, and Tara sat at Anyara’s side.
Gryvan, evidently inured to the effects of the man’s charm by long exposure, was glowering at the Shadowhand as he walked slowly around the table. Aewult looked merely bored, though he did favour Anyara with a particularly savage glare before he resumed his studied detachment.
“I want answers,” Gryvan rasped, his hands bunched into fists on the surface of the table.
“As do we all.” Mordyn nodded. “And we shall have them, I am sure.”
He paused suddenly in his circuit of the room, and frowned.
“Do you hear something?” he asked of no one in particular. And in the question’s wake came the unmistakable sound of raised voices and hurried feet somewhere within the Palace of Red Stone. Then what struck Anyara immediately as the sound of fighting. Her first thought was concern for Coinach, but the disturbance seemed to be coming from the front of the palace, beyond the door through which Gryvan and Aewult had presumably entered, not that at which Coinach stood guard. Tara was rising from her chair, alarmed.
“Wait, wait,” muttered Mordyn, extending a hand. “It’s probably nothing, but let’s wait a moment. Let’s not rush into anything.”
“I’ll see what’s happening,” said Aewult, rising, but Gryvan pushed his son back down into his seat.
“Kale,” the High Thane said. “Find out what it is.”
The brief tumult was already fading, but Gryvan’s shieldman obediently turned and went out through the doors behind the High Thane’s chair. Mordyn moved round that way, craning his neck as if to peer out as the doors swung shut behind Kale. The Chancellor took hold of the doors to hurry them on their way, and pushed them firmly closed. There was a dull clack as some latch fell into place. Anyara frowned at the sound, which seemed out of place. Inappropriate.
Mordyn turned, each of his hands reaching into the opposite sleeve. He withdrew them as he stepped forward, smiling. Anyara saw the gleam of metal, and had a vivid, ghastly memory of a feast night in the Tower of Thrones, and a serving woman leaning close to Lheanor oc Kilkry-Haig. She opened her mouth to cry out.
“How simple,” Mordyn said with satisfaction.
Tara was rising once more from her chair, shock plain on her face. Gryvan twisted round in his chair to see what was happening.
The Chancellor drove one of the long-bladed narrow knives into the back of Aewult’s neck, at the base of his skull. The other went in under Gryvan’s chin as he turned onto it. As soon as the blades were planted, the Shadowhand was running, darting around the table. He reached the second set of doors before either Tara or Anyara had got free of their hampering chairs.
“Coinach!” Anyara shouted.
The same dull clack of wood on wood as Mordyn sealed the doors.
“What have you done?” Tara Jerain gasped, hands rising to her mouth as she looked from her husband to the dead Thane and his son, their blood flooding out over the table.
“Paid some clubmen off the street to stage some distracting little trouble,” Mordyn muttered.
He ran at Anyara, surprisingly fast, and seized her by her shoulders. He threw her violently against the wall and she fell.
“Didn’t really think that would work,” she heard the Chancellor saying through the faint ringing in her ears.
She could hear the doors shaking too. Coinach shouting: “Anyara!”
“Thought I would be dead by now, but it would have been a price worth paying.”
Anyara got unsteadily to her feet. Mordyn had his wife by the throat, was holding her down on the surface of the table. Her mouth was agape.
“I suspected the game was done as soon as I heard you had been to see Gryvan. Knew it beyond doubt when I got his message demanding I go there myself. A pity. I could have done so much more. But this will do. This is enough.”
Tara had her hands about Mordyn’s wrists, straining ineffectually to pry them apart.
The door shook once more beneath Coinach’s assaults. Anyara looked from the latch holding the door shut to the knife protruding from the back of Aewult’s head. And chose the knife. She leaned across the table and wrenched it free with a sickening crunch. Mordyn looked round at her.
She rushed at him. None of the meagre training she had received from Coinach was needed. Mordyn raised no defence. He merely looked into her eyes as she ran at him, and kept his hands on Tara’s throat. Anyara stabbed him in the side, under his arm. She did remember something Coinach had told her then, and punched the knife in and out once, twice more, reaching for the heart. To be certain.
Mordyn fell heavily. Tara did not stir at first, but then lifted herself up groggily, one hand pawing at her neck. Anyara opened the door to admit Coinach. The shieldman came in with sword in hand, his eyes widening in astonishment as he took in the gory scene.
“What happened?” he murmured.
“We have to get out of here,” Anyara said, considerably more calmly than she felt. “Help me with Tara.”
She tried to put supporting hands under Tara’s elbows, but the Chancellor’s wife pushed her away. She was staring down at her dead husband.
“Tara,” Anyara said quietly. “We should go.”
The doors opposite rattled as someone tried to open them.
“We really should go,” Coinach said emphatically.
The doors crashed open under Kale’s foot, and the High Thane’s shieldman strode in, sword readied. His eyes moved with precision and speed, and settled on Coinach. Kale leaped forward, brushing the corner of the table. His sword came sweeping down. Coinach raised his own, and caught the descending blade and held it there. He brought his knee firmly up into Kale’s groin, lifting him momentarily off his feet and staggering him.
Coinach went after him, making two or three rapid slashing cuts. A single slightly misjudged parry and Coinach’s blade had skidded off the top of Kale’s blocking thrust and into his side. Anyara heard a rib break from the other side of the room.
Kale buckled, and Coinach hit him again, and again as he went down. Once Kale was on the ground, Coinach finished him with a straight thrust to his throat.
He frowned as he sheathed his sword.
“I had heard he was better than that.” He sounded vaguely disappointed.
VIII
Ess’yr scaled a mighty tree and crouched there, far above, in the crook of a branch. Sunlight had cracked the clouds and it spilled in pale abundance down through the boughs, patterning the forest floor with a web of shadows and ponds of light. It warmed the tan hues of Ess’yr’s hide jacket. Breathed life and lustre into her hair. Gazing up at her, Orisian squinted into the unfamiliar glare. He had to raise a hand to put a protective shadow over his eyes. How long since he had done that? He could even feel, when a beam of that light fell upon his cheek and his jaw, just a murmur of warmth in it. A whisper, presaging a new season. That heat stirred memories of other years in his skin. The only place it could not penetrate was the thick scar where a White Owl spear had opened his face. That remained cold and dead.
“Can you see anything?” he said. He did not call it out, for though she was high, she would hear him well enough.
“The valley.” Her voice came drifting down from the canopy, as natural as falling leaves. “I see your valley.”
The land sloped away on either side of them, to north and south. Southwards, sunwards, there was only
