I sucked in a deep breath, held it, listening beyond the canvas walls of my tent to the nighttime sounds of a military camp. Boots on gravel, soft whinnies of horses, the
Everything seemed normal.
And yet… and yet, everything had changed, though I did not know how or why.
Reaching out in the darkness, I wrapped my fingers around the cool, smooth hilt of my sword. Tonight, for no reason I could name, I wanted it close at hand.
Chapter 1
A heavy pounding on the door downstairs roused me from sleep.
“Obere!” came a distant shout. Damnable timing. I squinted into near darkness, frowned. The hour lay somewhere between midnight and dawn, and blades of moonlight slid between the window shutters, cutting an intricate pattern of light and darkness across the checkered quilt. Off in the night I heard plodding hooves and creaks from some passing merchant’s wagon, and from farther off still the distant baying of packs of wild dogs as they scavenged the battlefields a mile to the north of Kingstown.
The pounding on the door resumed. Feigning sleep wouldn’t work; somehow, King Elnar’s agents—probably that all too efficient Captain Iago—had tracked me down.
I tried to sit up and found a soft arm pinning my chest. Helda hadn’t yet heard a thing; her breathing remained deep and regular. I half chuckled to myself. Too much wine, too much love. She would sleep through the sacking of Kingstown, given half a chance.
As gently as I could, I slid out from under her, leaving the warm sweet smells of perfume and sweat and incense that filled her bed. I made a reassuring murmur at her puzzled sound and quickly gathered up pants, shirt, boots, and sword.
Damnable timing indeed. My first night alone with Helda in nearly two months, and King Elnar couldn’t wait till dawn to summon me back. Price of being one of his right-hand men, I supposed. Still, Captain Iago—or whoever the king had sent to find me—might have had the sense to let me stay lost at least a few hours more. It was seldom enough we had time to rest, but since the hell-creatures had been quiet now for nearly a week, King Elnar had granted me a night’s leave. I had tried to make the best of it, drinking my way through Kingstown’s half dozen taverns before joining Helda at her house to continue a more private celebration into the late hours.
Carrying my belongings, I padded quickly down the steps. First things first. I had to halt that racket before the whole town was up in arms. The hell-creatures had driven us back steadily over the last six months, and with the front lines of the war close to Kingstown, King Elnar’s troops now policed the streets—not that they needed much attention, since three-quarters of the inhabitants had fled. No need to rouse the night watch for a mere summons back to camp. I sighed, half in apprehension. What calamity had befallen us this time? Something bad must have happened to drag me back in the middle of the night. Had our scouts spotted new enemy movements? Or perhaps the hell-creatures had mounted another sneak-attack on our supply lines?
The pounding ceased as I rattled back the bar and flung open the heavy wooden door.
“By the six hells—” I began.
My curse died away unfinished. It wasn’t Captain Iago—or any of the other officers under King Elnar’s command. It was a stranger, a thin little man of perhaps forty with long black hair tied behind his head and a sharp gleam in his eye. He raised his lantern and peered up at me.
“Obere?” he demanded.
I towered a good head and a half over him, but that didn’t matter. He had a powerful presence, much like King Elnar—the sort of man you instinctively looked at whenever he entered a room, or listened to whenever he spoke. He was clean-shaven, dressed in red-and-gold silks with a strange rampant-lion crest stitched in gold and silver thread on the blouse, and I caught the scents of dressing-powder and lavender.
“Maybe,” I said cautiously, feeling for my sword’s hilt, wondering who he was and what he wanted. “You are… ?”
“It is you!” he said, grasping my arm. “The years have changed you—but it is good to see you alive!”
“Who are you,” I demanded, shrugging off his hand, “and what in all the hells do you think you’re doing here at this hour?” No matter who he was, I did not appreciate being awakened from my much-needed and much- deserved rest. It was one thing to receive the king’s summons and quite another to be roused by a stranger.
His voice was quiet. “Has it been so long you no longer know me?”
“I have no idea who—” I began. Then I paused and looked at him.
“Uncle Dworkin?” I whispered. It had been ten years since I’d last set eyes on him. He had worn his hair cropped short in those days, and he had seemed much, much taller.
Dworkin smiled and bowed his head. “The very same.”
“What—how—”
He waved me to silence. “Later. You must come with me, and quickly. I have sent for a carriage. I assure you, this cannot wait. You will come with me.
It was a command, not a suggestion.
I gave a bark of a laugh. “Go with you? Just like that?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t. I’m due back at camp in the morning. I’m no longer a child, Dworkin—I have duties and responsibilities you cannot imagine.”
“It is a matter of life and death.”
“Whose?”
“Yours—and King Elnar’s. I cannot say more than that.”
That made me pause. “What about King Elnar?” I asked slowly. My duty was clear: to protect and serve first the king and second all of Ilerium. If Dworkin knew something of such great importance that it endangered King Elnar’s life, I had to report it at once.
He shook his head, though. “Later. When we are safely away from here.”
I took a deep breath. Dworkin wasn’t really my uncle—he had been a close friend of my parents. When my father died at the hands of pirates from Saliir shortly after my birth, Dworkin had practically adopted my mother and me. Perhaps it was because he had had no children or family of his own, but I had come to view him as almost a father. It had been Dworkin who played soldier with me, brought me treats on high holidays, and took me hunting in the fields beyond our house at Piermont as if I were his own true son. It had been Dworkin who presented me with my first real sword, and Dworkin who began the training in arms that had ultimately become my livelihood. That is, until he disappeared following my mother’s death from the Scarlet Plague. That had been just after my fourteenth birthday. Those had been crazy times, mad times, with death in the air and fear in every heart. After the death-cart took my mother’s body away, she and Dworkin were both simply
And now he stood before me, smug as you please, expecting me to drop everything and go off with him for reasons he wouldn’t share beyond claiming it was a matter of life or death to both the king and me. It was impossible.
Instead of filial love and devotion, I felt a sudden towering rage at having been abandoned.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I growled at him, “unless you explain exactly what you mean. See my orderly in the morning, if you like, and I’ll breakfast with you in my tent. We can catch up with each other then. And you’d better have a damned good explanation—for everything!”
I started to shut the door.
“You will not be alive in the morning if you remain here,” he said softly.
