Shadowmarch

circled the mount and whose foundations in many places were actually beneath the waters of Brenn’s Bay, a skirt of fitted stone which, along with the bay itself, made the little sometimes-lsland into what had been for centuries a fortress that could resist any siege, the New Wall, as it was called (though no one could remember a time before it had existed), that surrounded the royal keep and touched all the cardinal towers except the one named for summer, and the Old Wall that bounded the inmost heart of the keep, and within whose protective shadow lay the throne hall and the royal residence These two edifices were as riddled with hallways and chambers as anthills, so old and vast and beset by centuries of intermittent neglect that they both contained rooms and passages that had not been entered or even remembered for years.

The smaller buildings that surrounded them made the lower castle just as intricate a maze as the residence and throne hall, jumble of temples and shops, stables and houses, from the high-timbered mansions of the nobility nestled inside the Old Wall to the stacked hovels of those of less lofty station, piled so leaningly high that they turned the narrow streets between them into shadowy arbors of dark wood and plaster Most of the buildings of Southmarch had been connected over the years by a ramshackle aggregation of covered walkways and tunnels to protect the denizens from the wet northern weather and the often ruthless winds, so that sometimes all the castle’s disparate structures, built over generations, seemed to have fused together like the contents of one of the tide pools in the rocks at the ocean edge of Brenn’s Bay, where stone and plants and shells grew together into one semiliving—and no longer separable—mass.

Still, there was sun here, Ferras Vansen told himself, far more of it in a year than he had seen in his entire youth in the Dales, not to mention fresh winds off the sea. That made it all bearable, and more than bearable: there were times when just being in the place filled him with joy.

By the time the afternoon had begun to fade, Vansen had walked most of the uneven circle of the Old Wall, stopping at each guard post, even those that consisted of nothing more than a lonely soldier with a pike standing before a locked door or gate and trying not to doze. Drunk on sea air and some rare time to pursue his own thoughts without the distractions of command, Vansen briefly considered a course around the much lengthier New Wall, but a look at the harbor and the sails of the newly arrived carrack from Hierosol reminded him that he could not afford the time. There would be a hundred tasks before the end of the day; the visitors must be safely lodged, guarded, and watched, and Avin Brone, the lord constable, would expect Vansen to take charge of the task himself. The ship had four masts—a good-sized vessel, which meant that the envoy might have come with a sizable bodyguard.Vansen cursed quietly. More than one day’s pleasurable solitude was going to be sacrificed to this ship and its passengers. He would have to keep his men and the southerners apart as much as possible. With King Olin a captive of Hierosol’s Ludis Drakava, there was much bad blood between the Hierosolines and the Southmarch folk.

When he came out of the small guard tower by the West Green, he was distracted from his planning by the sight of someone else on the walls, a cloaked and hooded figure that seemed slight enough to be a woman or a young boy. For an illogical moment he wondered if it could be her, the one he dared not think of too often. Had fate somehow brought her here alone to this place where they could not help but speak? The thought of all the things he might say to her, careful, respectful, sincere, passed through his mind in a heartbeat before he realized that it could not be her, that she was still out with the others hunting in the hills.

As though this swirl of confused thoughts made a sound as audible and frightening as a swarm of hornets, the hooded figure suddenly seemed to notice him; it immediately stepped down from the wall into the stairwell and disappeared from his sight. By the time Vansen reached the stairs he could not discern that particular dark, hooded cloak in the throng of people in the narrow streets below the wall.

So I am not the only one who likes the view from high places, he thought. He felt a pang; it took him a moment to realize, to his surprise, that it was loneliness.

“You’re too much inside yourself, Vansen,” old Murroy had once told him. “You think more than you talk, but that’s little use when the others can see so plainly what you’re thinkin’. They know that you think well of yourself, and often not so well of them. The older men in particular, Laybrick and Southstead, don’t like it.”

“I do not like men who… who take advantage,” Vansen had answered, trying to explain what was in his heart but not quite having the words. “I do not like men who take what the gods give and pretend it’s their due.”

Hearing that, Murroy’s leathery old face had creased in one of his infrequent smiles. “Then you must not like most men.”

Ferras Vansen had wondered ever since whether his captain’s words were true. He liked Captain Murroy himself slightly more than he feared him, or at least he liked the man’s brutal evenhandedness, his unwillingness to complain, his occasional flashes of sour humor. Donal Murroy was staying that way to the end: even as the wasting sickness stole his life, he offered no complaint against fate or the gods, saying only that he wished he had known what was going to happen so he could have given his wife’s lying, bragging younger brother a thrashing while he still had the strength. “As it is, I’ll have to leave it to the next man whose hospitality or good sense he offends. I hope it’s someone who has the time to beat him within a hair of his useless life.”

Vansen marveled at how the older man could laugh despite the racking cough and the blood on his lips and stubbled chin, how his shadowed, deep-sunken eyes were still as bright and heartlessly fierce as a hunting bird’s.

“You’ll follow me as guard captain, Vansen,” said the dying man. “I’ve told Brone. Himself has no powerful objections, though he thinks you a bit young. The great man’s right, of course, but I wouldn’t trust that ass Dyer with the bung from an empty cask and all the older men are too fat and lazy. No, it’s you, Vansen. Go ahead and muck things up if you want to. They’ll just come and put flowers on my grave and miss me.” Another laugh, another spray of red-tinged spittle.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Don’t bother, lad If you do it right, you’ll spend all your life working at it with no more payment than a little land to build a house and p’raps a spot in a proper graveyard at the end of it instead of the potter’s field “ He wiped his chin with a gnarled hand. “Which reminds me —don’t let them forget there’s a place set aside for me in the guards’ cemetery. I don’t want to end up out in the western hills somewhere, but I don’t want Mickael Southstead pissing on my grave, either, so you keep an eye on me after I’m gone.”

He hadn’t cried when the captain died, but he sometimes felt as if he wanted to when he thought about him now. The captain’s manner of going had been much like that of Ferras’ own father, now that he thought on it. He hadn’t cried for Pedar Vansen either, and hadn’t been to his father’s grave in the old temple yard at Little Stell for years, but that wasn’t really so surprising. Vansen’s sisters, what was left of the crofter’s family, were all in Southmarch-town now, settled with husbands and children of their own. Daler’s Troth was several days’ ride away in the hills to the west. His life was here now, in this dizzyingly large and crowded citadel.

He made his way around to the western tower of the Raven’s Gate. The men in the guardhouse there had a well-stoked fire and he stopped to warm his hands before going to see what Lord Brone wanted done about the southerners. The easy chatter had fallen off when he had come in, as usual, and all the men were standing around in awkward silence except for Collum Dyer, the officer in charge, closest thing to a friend Ferras Vansen had. He dreaded the day he would have to draw that line Murroy had talked of so often, and discipline Dyer for something —whatever Dyer felt about Vansen was certainly not fear, and did not quite seem like respect either—because he was certain that would be the day that their friendship, slight as it was, would end.

“Been out wandering the walls, Captain?” Dyer asked him Vansen was grateful that Dyer at least named him by his rank in front of the men That was a small nod of respect, wasn’t it? “Any sign of invading forces?'

Vansen let himself smile. “No, and Perin be thanked for that, today and every day. But there is a Hierosoline ship in the harbor and there will be fighting men on board, so let us not take things too lightly, either.”

He left them and made his way down the stairs to the sloping road that led up to the Great Hall. The lord constable had his work chambers in the maze of corridors behind the throne room, and at this time of the day Vansen felt certain he would be there. As he walked up the road toward the vast carved facade, where the guards were already straightening at their young captain’s approach, he looked up at the high hall nestled in the midst of the Mount’s towers like a gem on a royal crown and felt a clutch of worry that something might change, that some error of his own or the whim of feckless gods might take all this away from him.