But the captain’s young wife hadn’t cared for Narrowmar as he did. She wasn’t content to live beneath the mountain. One day she had gone out to pick wildflowers and met a young soldier from the king’s army. He’d offered her a life where their children could live in the sunshine, not rule over corridors of dust. Within a fortnight of their meeting, she had gone. And the captain had settled deeper into the fortress, clinging like grime to its ancient stones.
Other soldiers accepted the same fate, living out their days in a deployment devoid of bloodshed and action. The captain oversaw those men faithfully, putting them through rigorous daily exercises. A handful could hold Narrowmar against whole armies, and the old soldiers stood ready. The captain had never held the great stone door against an enemy, foreign or domestic, but Narrowmar was his dominion, and he kept it well.
Then one day, Jasper Larke, the faraway liege lord of the forgotten fortress, had ordered a company of reinforcements to Narrowmar to prepare for the arrival of one Lady Mae Barden. It was the second time Narrowmar had hosted such a guest.
The old captain hardly knew what to do with the lively young men who suddenly occupied his barracks, filling the underground passages with clamor and warmth. When the daily exercises weren’t enough to sap their youthful energy, he set them to cleaning up the fortress, sweeping dust from its corridors and repairing the ancient adornments—the statues and fountains and elaborate stone pillars, artifacts of a forgotten age. He began to feel that the old place still needed him after all.
Then came a summer evening when a well-dressed couple—he with luminous eyes and a haughty aspect, she with frizzy hair and fire in her gaze—arrived on horseback and informed him they were taking over the stronghold’s defenses. The couple carried orders direct from the hand of Lord Larke himself, yet they spoke like people from High Lure, more suited to the luxuries of the king’s city than the peace of the outer counties.
Unlike the young soldiers, the two strangers were not armed with bluster and fresh-forged steel. They carried boxes full of pigments, horsehair paintbrushes, and linseed oil. They set up their supplies in Lord Larke’s chamber off the fortress’s main corridor, and they set to painting.
The old captain knew little of mages and less of art, so he paid them no heed—until he saw their curses at work. It happened during the lunch hour. One of the newer soldiers was caught stealing decrepit sculptures from a little-used banquet hall to sell in the antique market back home. The captain would have docked his pay and been done with it, but the curse painters insisted on having him dragged before them in chains in the middle of the soldiers’ mess hall.
The captain would have stopped them if he’d known what they had planned. He told himself so often.
The woman had taken the lead, standing over the young soldier, wild hair cascading around her shoulders like a queen’s mantle. “Narrowmar is one of the finest examples of the ancient stone arts left in the kingdom of Lure,” she said, her voice ringing as loud and clear as a struck anvil. “Such destruction cannot be tolerated.”
“It was just a bit of a statue.” The soldier looked embarrassed at being caught, but he wasn’t wise enough to be afraid.
“That statue has graced these halls for hundreds of years,” the woman said. “This fortress is wasted on Lord Larke, but he has asked us to protect it. That includes every cornice, every moldy tapestry, every marble bust, no matter how ugly. We will not allow a treasure such as this to be plundered.”
“No one uses this pit,” the soldier said. “And the decorations—”
“Art,” the woman cut in, “does not need to be used.”
“Yes,” her husband said, his voice giving the impression of a cookpot bubbling inside him. “And it should not be commodified by a lowlife soldier with no inkling of Narrowmar’s significance.”
The old captain bristled at that. He might not be highborn, but he resented his men being called lowlifes by strangers from the city.
The woman bent closer to the soldier. “You will be punished for your lack of reverence.”
“Now look here, sir, madam,” the captain cut in. “We have a protocol to address—”
The woman raised a slim, paint-spattered hand, proffering the letter from Lord Larke granting her authority. “We shall handle any disciplinary actions from now on.”
The captain scowled. “As the commanding—”
“What do you say, darling?” the woman asked her husband. “The incendiary?”
He inclined his head. “I think that’s the right choice, given the damages done.”
She smiled. “It’s one of my favorites.” She flicked her fingers at the old captain as if he were the lowliest servant. “I need an item of clothing from the culprit, preferably one he wears often.”
The captain didn’t move. He was not accustomed to taking orders in his own fortress. Then the woman turned to face him, and he recoiled. Her eyes were worse than cruel, seeming to contain every dark desire that had spilled forth from the captain’s soul in his worst moments—the silent profanities he had slung at his wife as she left him, the verbal ones he had shouted to the mountain after she was gone. He saw the same darkness and anger concentrated in the curse painter’s eyes—and he was afraid.
“A jacket or hat will do,” she whispered.
The captain turned stiffly. “Your cap, soldier.”
The young statue thief handed over his woolen cap, more confused than nervous. The woman plucked it from his hand without making eye contact with either the soldier or the captain. Her husband nodded, his large eyes mirroring her intensity. They moved as a unit, sharing a single purpose.
The woman knelt on
