again.” Wain nudged her horse a few paces into the courtyard, opening a space for her warriors to advance and spread themselves on her flanks. The animal was uneasy. Perhaps it had never smelled Kyrinin before.
“Did he?” Aeglyss murmured, with a little shrug of his shoulders. “I confess my memory is not all it was. I find myself much more drawn to the future now than to the past. Such a bitter thing, the past. So full of disappointments, don’t you think?”
Wain’s mind was racing. Aeglyss had disappeared some time ago, after Kanin had confronted him outside Anduran. The breach then had seemed irreversible; the breakdown of any alliance with the White Owls unquestionable. Yet here he was, the halfbreed her brother so detested, camped at the very heart, the home, of the Gyre Bloods with his little warband. And there were changes in him. His skin, always pallid, was now waxen. There were dark blotches pouched beneath his eyes, a wasted fragility about his frame. And yet his voice had a stronger spine of arrogance, a fuller, deeper timbre, than it did before. His gaze — those piercing, transfixing inhuman eyes — held Wain; she felt it on her skin, her body, like hands. Her heart was beating faster. A hollowness was in her stomach, almost fear, almost.. something she could not quite name.
“Are you responsible for the dead on the walls?”
Aeglyss frowned, angled his head to squint up at her against the sharp light.
“Ah, not entirely. They didn’t die by my hand, at least. White Owl spears did the deed. It can’t trouble you, surely? They’re nothing: Lannis strays, hiding away amongst these ruins when we arrived. I’d thought to find you and your brother here, not unhomed farmers.”
“These are not your walls to decorate as you see fit. Kan Avor is the rightful possession of Ragnor oc Gyre. We hold it empty, ready for him to claim and occupy.”
Aeglyss shrugged. “If you won’t eat with me, you might at least dismount. We should talk, you and I. There are things you should know.”
He held out his hands to her. She noticed for the first time that there were bandages around his wrists. And she felt as though those outstretched hands had taken hold of her, had laid themselves on her arms and were drawing her towards him: drawing her into a gentle, warm, firm embrace. To dispel the sensation, she kicked her horse forwards. It trotted to the edge of one of the fires, stirring up ash and dirt before it shied away from the flames. Every one of the Kyrinin had stood up now. They gathered beside and behind Aeglyss.
The na’kyrim laughed, and the laugh flowed over Wain like water. It was a living, liquid thing. An unnatural thing, she thought, not remotely human. Not remotely mirthful.
“I am so very tired of being refused,” Aeglyss said. He hung his head, letting his arms fall back to his sides. “So long I had nothing else…” he jerked his head sideways, wincing, like a man beset by a stinging insect “… nothing else.”
Wain glanced at the warriors who flanked her. On every face she saw some intimation of the confusion, the disquiet, that writhed beneath. She knew it was in them because it was in her too; it was in the very walls of this decrepit courtyard. Aeglyss was breathing it out with the spent air from his lungs, breathing it over them.
“Get down,” she heard him say, and her legs and arms were already obeying him. For a sluggish moment she was an observer, watching her body as it swung out of the saddle to the ground. She shook herself, and was standing there by her horse’s head, holding its reins.
Aeglyss swayed a little. One of the Kyrinin beside him put a hand under the na’kyrim ’s elbow until he had steadied himself. Wain considering climbing back onto her horse, but she feared how that might appear to the warriors she led. She kicked wet earth over the campfire burning by her feet. The flames hissed and died almost at once. The sunlight was strong here in the stone-enclosed space of the courtyard, undiluted by the wind. It was even a little warm on the side of her face. There was a stench on the air, of dank decay, rotten vegetation. She glared at Aeglyss.
“Oh,” he said quietly. “I don’t want to argue with you, Wain. You were always less cold than your brother. Life, possibilities, always burned more strongly in you. Even when you were children.” He was looking at her out of the corner of his eye now, a harsh little smile curling his mouth. “Ha. Where did that come from, I wonder? There’s so much that… comes to me now, and I don’t know how, or why. I was always afraid of madness. Always. Is this it, do you think?”
“There’s nothing new…” Wain began to say, but cut herself short as Aeglyss took a long stride forwards.
“No!” he cried. “Not madness. Just the woodworker, learning the use of a new tool; an archer learning the bend of a new bow. And no,” softly now, soft in Wain’s mind, “everything’s new, that’s what you should say. Nothing’s the same, not ever. I’m not the same, Wain. This blunted blade you cast away has been sharpened. Do you doubt me?”
“I don’t doubt that you are… different.” And that much was true. His sheer presence, his mere proximity, set such thoughts and doubts crawling around in her mind, like ants nesting in the back of her skull. He had never had this kind of effect on her — on anyone, as far as she knew — before.
Some of her warriors had dismounted. Others were pressing in through the gateway behind her. They wanted to fight, she knew. They were afraid of Aeglyss, of this invisible cloud of potency that enveloped him. She had enough strength here, perhaps, to overcome the halfbreed and all his woodwights. If Kanin had been at her side, he would not have hesitated. And yet something in her quailed at the image of such slaughter, as if it would be a betrayal of a gift offered up to her by fate.
“No, you don’t,” Aeglyss said. “I can see it in you, I can smell it on you. You think there is something here.”
He turned and pointed to one of the White Owl warriors: a muscular man with a mass of writhing lines tattooed on his face.
“See? The son of the Voice herself. He and his a’an — my spear a’an now. The White Owls accept me as one of their own. The whole clan is my spear a’an, my beloved people. But I am Horin-Gyre too, not just White Owl. By my father, I am of your Blood, Wain.”
“That means nothing. What is it you want here? Have you come to offer us another alliance with your tame savages? You know the time for that has passed.”
“Oh, I offer that. That, but much more.” To her astonishment, Aeglyss knelt then, and bowed before her. It was so unexpected that she could only stand and stare at the crown of his head, the long hair that fell forwards and hid his face.
“I am become a new man,” he murmured. “Servant of all desires. There are thousands coming. I can feel their footsteps in my mind, I can catch the scent of their ardour on the wind. War is to follow, war beyond all reason; unending, unmaking. And I will ride its currents like a bird on the storm. Let me bear us all up on my wings, Wain.”
And in her heart then she felt a great hunger stir, a longing for the future and all its tumultuous possibilities. She saw the Black Road rushing like a living thing out from this shattered city and bearing them all on its broad back into a vast and endless plain, lit by a glorious fiery light, strewn with the corpses of the faithless. So, she wondered, is this how it is to be? Is this the shape of our fate? And a small, faint voice within her, not entirely her own, whispered, Yes, yes, this is how it is to be.
II
“Is it true?”
Aewult the Bloodheir was shouting at Anyara, his face so close to her own that she could smell the hot memory of his last meal. A blush of anger had coloured his rough, stubbled cheeks, a film of spittle coated the creases of his lips. His rage was clearly profound.
“Has your brother marched?” Aewult demanded. “Where are his warriors going? Kolglas?”
Anyara pulled her head back a fraction. However potent the Bloodheir’s anger might be, she had her own stores of irritation to draw on. She planted a firm hand on his chest, applying just enough pressure to make sure that he noticed it. To her astonishment, and alarm, Aewult struck her arm aside.
Coinach was there at once, drawing her aside, putting himself between her and the Bloodheir. The shieldman stood tall, one hand on Anyara’s arm, the other on the pommel of his sword. He and Aewult stared at one another, Aewult’s eyes burning with indignation and threat, Coinach’s cold and calm. At once horrified and excited, Anyara
