‘Get him out. The villain’s mad, crawling, and Lord knows who he’s just robbed to get that coin.’ Red patches appeared high on the beefy fellow’s cheeks.
‘Of course, Councilman Hetmon.’ A quick bow to the councilman and Jameous clapped his hands, a summoning if ever I saw one. He turned back to me. ‘We’re very choosy about our clientele, young man, and I can assure you that a full set of clothes suitable for Lord Kellermin’s receptions would cost rather more than a ducet in any event.’
The coin flickered, gold across knuckles. In Hodd town I could empty a tailor’s with a single uncut ducet.
A pair of men emerged from the back of the shop, journeymen tailors by the looks of them, in neat black tunics. One held crimping shears, the other a yard rule. I took a deep breath, the kind we pretend will calm us down. Quality costs. Manners cost nothing.
‘Will this suffice?’ I drew out a handful of gold: ten, maybe fifteen coins. There’s a weight to that many gold pieces that lets you know what you’re holding is worth something.
‘Call the town-law on this one, he’s clearly murdered someone of consequence, or left them bleeding in an alley.’ Councilman Hetmon took half a step my way before realizing there was no one ready to hold him back.
Calm.
I took another of those deep breaths. The two tailors, with the shears and the rule, advanced, each trying to be the slower one, neither keen to arrive first.
Since Hetmon’s half-step did little to close the gap between us I closed it myself. Be calm, I told myself. Four quick strides and I had him by belt and shoulder. A hefty man but I managed to propel him with enough speed that he put a Hetmon-shaped hole through the shutters. I turned to find the shorter of the two journeymen swinging his rule my way. I let it break across the breastplate beneath my cloak. Behind me the remainder of the shuttering came free and fell with a crash. It turns out I don’t listen to good advice even when I’m the one offering it.
‘The choosing of good clientele is of course a priority,’ I told Jameous. ‘But since you appear to have no other calls on your time, perhaps you can schedule me in for an immediate fitting?’
The master tailor backed away, glancing at the hanging fragments of shutter. The journeyman with the shears promptly dropped them; the other seemed fixated by the splintered end of his broken rule.
‘Clothes!’ I clapped to summon a little attention, but Jameous kept glancing to the road.
I took a look myself, wondering if the town-law had turned up to lend the councilman a hand and try my patience. In place of the padded armour and iron-banded clubs of the town-law rank upon rank of bearded Norsemen marched past, the weak sun glinting on ring-mail, garish colours on their wide, round shields, helms set with ceremonial horns to either side. I made it to the window in time to see the centre of the parade approaching. Four figures on horseback, the warriors ahead of them encircled by the coils of serpent horns.
‘Damn me!’ I stepped out through the splintered wood. Councilman Hetmon crawled away at a good lick, but I’d lost interest in him, and indeed in all my sartorial ambitions. ‘Sindri!’ Riding high on that white gelding of his, a robe of white fur, hair now unbraided and confined instead by a gold band, but Sindri even so.
‘SINDRI!’ I bellowed it at him. Just in time as the two warriors marching before his horse winded their serpents and drowned out all other noise.
For a moment it seemed he hadn’t heard, and then he turned his horse, shouldering through the ranks, setting the marchers in disarray.
‘—ell are you doing here?’ His words reached me as the howl of the serpent horns died away.
‘I’ve come to see my throne.’ My cheeks ached with a smile that hadn’t needed me to put it there. It felt good to see a familiar face.
‘You look like hell.’ He swung down from the saddle, furs swishing, some kind of arctic fox by the look of them. ‘I took you for a Saracen at first. A sell-sword, and not one finding much luck.’
I glanced down at myself. ‘Heh. Well I guess I picked up a few things in Afrique. A pretty good tan for one.’ I set my dark wrist to his pale one.
‘Afrique? Are you never still?’ He glanced back at the column halted in the street. ‘Anyhow, you must come with us. You can ride beside Elin. You remember my sister Elin?’
Oh I did. Visit us in winter, she had said. ‘My horse is back at the inn,’ I told him. ‘And where are you bound? And for what? Has it grown too cold in the north?’
‘Getting married.’ He grinned. ‘Walk with me, if it’s not beneath a king’s dignity.’
‘Dignity?’ I matched his grin and flicked a splinter from my shoulder.
Sindri rejoined his column on foot and I took the place of the warrior beside him. ‘My lady.’ I nodded up at Elin, pale in black velvets, white-blonde hair cascading behind her.
‘You’ve not met my uncle Thorgard, and Norv the Raw, our bannerman from Hake Vale?’ Sindri indicated the other riders, older men, grim, helmed, scarred.
I smacked a fist to my breastplate and inclined my head, remembering the low opinion such men held of the courtesies traded in Vyene. ‘And your father?’
‘His duties keep him in Maladon. Dead things rising from the barrowlands. Also his health is—’
‘A chill, nothing more.’ Duke Maladon’s brother leaned across his nephew.
The column restarted with a blast of serpent horns. We marched on into the silence left in their wake. ‘Married?’ I asked. ‘To a southerner?’
‘A lass from the Hagenfast, good Viking stock. One of Father’s alliances, but she’s a pretty thing. A hellcat in
