know. Now there’s someone who really is sulking, I think.”
As it sometimes did once Winterbirth was past, Kolkyre’s air in the next dawn had the tang of the sea on it. A salty mist settled over the roofs and alleyways; all the timbers and the stones of the town were damp with it. The sailors and fishermen called it the moir cest, this breath of the sea that drifted in off Anaron’s Bay, its name in the ancient language from which that of the Aygll Kingship, and later the Bloods, had grown. Its arrival in Kolkyre was held to be an ill omen for any undertaking. The longer the leaden fog persisted, the more downcast and querulous would the superstitious seamen who filled the dockside taverns become.
Such concerns did not deter Old Cailla as she made her careful way down towards the quayside, a long yoke across her shoulders. She knew without doubt that a body’s fortune, whether good or ill, depended upon things other than the weather. She had lived more than three score years in Kolkyre, and seen the moir cest come and go hundreds of times. For the last thirty of those years, she had made this same journey every week, in rain and shine and storm alike: out from the servant’s quarters in the grounds of the Tower of Thrones, around the edge of the garrison’s barracks, then down the long straight slope of Sea Street towards the harbour. She had walked this way so often that she could have done it blind, let alone in a heavy mist.
At the foot of Sea Street she turned left and made her way along the row of inns, warehouses and workshops that lined the waterfront. The mist made everyone who was out and about keep their heads down and their voices low. There were oars rattling in a boat, invisible out on the water somewhere, and a few half-hearted shouts rang out. A handful of stallholders were setting out their wares on the quayside, but they did so in a subdued manner, as if they did not wish to disturb the melancholic fogs.
“It’s a bad moir cest, eh, Cailla?” Merric called to her as she entered his shop.
The old woman swung her yoke off her shoulders and rested it against the doorpost. “I’ve seen worse and better.”
“Well, so’ve I. I’ve seen more better than worse is all I’m saying.”
“Fair enough. Perhaps you’re right.”
“Perhaps I am,” Merric said, sounding pleased to have wrung this concession from her. “Look here, you’ll have your pick of a good haul this morning.”
He gestured at a row of pots set along a table. Every one of them was filled with shellfish, bathed in sea water. Cailla peered into each of the pots in turn.
“You’ve many guests up at the Tower now, eh?” Merric said. “They’ll not have tasted the like of our Kolkyre shells down where they’re from.”
“That I wouldn’t know,” Old Cailla said. “All fresh, Merric?”
“I’d not try to pass anything but the freshest on you, you know that. You were buying from my father when I was still at my mother’s breast. You’d sniff out a stale shell faster than I could myself, wouldn’t you?”
Cailla grimaced at him: an indeterminate, gap-toothed expression that might have signified anything from disgust to amusement.
When she emerged a short while later, Cailla bore two lidded pots strung from her yoke. They swung heavily in time with her stride. A few steps from Merric’s door, having felt the balance and sway of the pots, she paused. She knelt, lowering her burden to the ground, and made a few swift adjustments to the knots. Satisfied, she made to rise, one hand pushing against the cobbled surface of the path.
No one paid any great attention to Cailla on her weekly journey from the Tower to Merric’s shop and back again. Had someone watched the old kitchen maid, they might have noted that every time, week after week and year upon year, she paused thus to adjust the balance of her yoke. Every time, she knelt in exactly the same place on the roadway, and rose with exactly the same touch of one hand to the cobblestones. They might note it, but would still have thought it nothing but the habit of a woman old enough that to change anything in her routine would be beyond her.
This time, there was a difference. No observer, however keen-eyed, could have caught it. Nevertheless, it was a difference profound enough to set Cailla’s heart pounding in her chest as she made her slow way back up Sea Street. For the first time in several years, her finger had caught the edge of something nestled in the seam between two of the cobbles. A subtle flick had freed it and folded it up into the palm of her hand: a thin piece of wood into which was cut a single short line of script. Cailla had not looked at it. She did not need to. A brief examination with practised fingertips told her what the message was, and it bestowed upon her a great task in a worthy cause; the final shedding of the lie she had worn for a life all these years.
It was all the old woman could do not to laugh exultantly as she trudged on towards the mist-wrapped Tower of Thrones with her two heavy pots of shellfish.
III
“Allow me to offer this gift, Thane.” Mordyn Jerain pressed a small bundle wrapped in the softest deer hide into Orisian’s hands. “It is nothing much. Just a token of our High Thane’s support for your cause. And of our sympathies.”
“I am grateful,” murmured Orisian as he fumbled with the folds of deerskin. The soft brown hide fell away to reveal a flat, round belt buckle of polished gold, twisted in mimicry of rope.
“It’s a very fine piece,” he said.
“Yes,” agreed the Chancellor. “Made by one of Hoke’s finest goldsmiths, we believe.”
“Hoke,” Orisian repeated.
“Indeed. It comes from Igryn oc Dargannan-Haig’s own treasury.”
“I see.”
“You need not worry,” said Mordyn, with a radiant smile. “Igryn has no further use for it.”
“I imagine not,” Orisian said. He, like everyone in Kolkyre, had heard of Igryn oc Dargannan-Haig’s fate. The rebellious Thane, after his humiliating defeat at the hands of Gryvan oc Haig, had been blinded and taken in chains back to Vaymouth. He languished there now, humbled along with the rest of his Blood. The belt buckle was what, then? Message? Threat?
The summons from the Shadowhand had been polite, deferential even, but it had been a summons nevertheless. It had come without further explanation, beyond a vaguely expressed desire to meet Orisian formally before the feast that Lheanor would be hosting in the Tower that evening. Orisian’s nervousness had hardly been assuaged by Taim Narran’s earnestly offered advice as they walked together towards the Steward’s House where Mordyn had taken up residence.
“It’s nothing more than that he wants to take your measure, I’m sure,” the warrior had said. “He’ll be pleasant most likely. Full of easy words. He’s seldom short of them, from what I’ve seen. Most of what he says will be empty, though, or insincere, so pay it no heed.”
Watching Mordyn now, Orisian detected no sign of either emptiness or insincerity. The man was relaxed, as apparently at ease as he might be if Orisian were an old friend.
“Let me offer you some wine,” the Chancellor said, turning to a small table where a simple clay ewer stood.
“Only a little, thank you,” Orisian said. He would have preferred none, but was fearful of giving offence, or betraying his nervousness.
“Let’s sit.” Mordyn nodded over his shoulder towards a pair of cushioned chairs. “I think you’ll find the wine pleasing. It’s one of the best out of Drandar: a gift to the High Thane from the Vintners. He allowed me to bring just a single vase with me.” He handed Orisian a full goblet. “We can count ourselves greatly fortunate that it survived the journey. The roads are not as smooth as they might be in these parts.”
Orisian took a cautious sip. No matter how good it might be — and it did indeed taste as smooth and rich as any wine he had ever come across — he had no intention of drinking more than that one mouthful.
“I cannot imagine how bitter your grief, your anger, must be,” the Shadowhand sighed as he settled into the other chair. He shook his head sorrowfully. “That one so young should have to suffer such losses is most cruel. It is utterly undeserved.”
“I have been taught not to wish for what cannot be.”
“A valuable lesson,” Mordyn said. “Much misery could be avoided in the world if it were more widely heeded.
