The Red Knight

your mate’s nest.’ Thorn made a motion intended to convey that he would continue to heal sick wyverns.

Sidhi unfolded his wings. ‘I was going to hunt,’ he said. ‘I am hungry. And being summoned by you is like being called a dog.’ The wings spread farther and farther. ‘But it may be that I will choose to hunt to the east, and it may be that I will see your enemies.’

‘Your enemies as well,’ Thorn said wearily. Why are they all so childish?

The wyvern threw back its head, and screamed, and the wings beat – a moment of chaos, and it was in the air, the trees all around it shedding leaves in the storm of air. A night of hard rain wouldn’t have ripped so many leaves from the trees.

And then Thorn reached out with his power – gently, hesitantly, a little like a man rising from bed on a dark night to find his way down unfamiliar stairs. He reached out to the east – farther, and a little farther, until he found what he always found.

Her. The lady on the Rock.

He probed the walls like a man running his tongue over a bad tooth. She was there, enshrined in her power. And with her was something else entirely. He couldn’t read it – the fortress carried its own power, its own ancient sigils which worked against him.

He sighed. It was raining. He sat in the rain, and tried to enjoy the rise of spring around him.

Tunxis killed the nun, and now the lady has more soldiers. He had set something in motion, and he wasn’t sure why.

And he wondered if he had made a mistake.

Chapter Two

Bad Tom

Harndon Palace – The Queen

Desiderata lay on the couch of her solar chewing new cherries and savouring the change in the air. Because – at last – spring had come. Her favourite season. After Lent would come Easter and then Whitsunday, and the season of picnics, of frolics by the river, or eating fresh fruit, wearing flowers, walking barefoot . . .

. . . and tournaments.

She sighed at the thought of tournaments. Behind her, Diota, her nurse, made a face. She could see the old woman’s disapproval in the mirror.

‘What? Now you frown if I sigh?’ she asked.

Diota straightened her back, putting a fist into it like a pregnant woman. Her free hand fingered the rich paternoster at her neck. ‘You sound like a whore pleasing a customer, mistress – if you’ll pardon the crudity of an old woman-’

‘Who’s known you all these years,’ the Queen completed the sentence. Indeed, she’d had Diota since she was weaned. ‘Do I? And what do you know about the sounds whores make, nurse?’

‘Now, my lady!’ Diota came forward, waggling a finger. Coming around the screen, she stopped as if she’d hit an invisible barrier. ‘Oh! By the Sweet Lord – put some clothes on, girl! You’ll catch your death! It’s not spring yet, morsel!’

The Queen laughed. She was naked in the new sunlight, her tawny skin flecked with the imperfections of the glass in her solar’s window, lying on the pale brown profusion of her hair. She drew something from the sunlight falling on her skin – something that made her glow from within.

Desiderata rose and stood at the mirror – the longest mirror in the Demesne, made just for her, so that she could examine herself from the high arches of her feet, up her long legs, past her hips and thighs and the deep recess of her navel to her breasts, her upright shoulders, her long and tapered neck, deep cut chin, a mouth made for kissing, long nose and wide grey eyes with lashes so long that sometimes she could lick them.

She frowned. ‘Have you seen the new lady in waiting? Emmota?’ she said.

Her nurse chuckled alongside her. ‘She’s a child.’

‘A fine figure. Her waist is thin as a rail.’ The Queen looked at herself with careful scrutiny.

Diota smacked her hip. ‘Get dressed, you hussy!’ she laughed. ‘You’re looking for compliments. She’s nothing to you, Miss. A child. No breasts.’ She laughed. ‘Every man says you are the beauty of the world,’ she added.

The Queen continued to look in the mirror. ‘I am. But for how long?’ She put her hands up over her head, arching her back as her chest rose.

Her nurse slapped her playfully. ‘Do you want the king to find you thus?’

Desiderata smiled at her woman. ‘I could say yes. I want him to find me just like this,’ she said. And then, her voice coloured with power, she said, ‘Or I could say I am as much myself, and as much the Queen, naked, as I am clothed.’

Her nurse took a step away.

‘But I won’t say any such thing. Bring me something nice. The brown wool gown that goes with my hair. And my golden belt.’

‘Yes, my lady.’ Diota nodded and frowned. ‘Shall I send some of your ladies to dress you?’

The Queen smiled and stretched, her eyes still on the mirror. ‘Send me my ladies,’ she said, and subsided back onto the couch in the solar.

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

At Ser Hugo’s insistence, the master archers had set up butts in the fields along the river.

Men grumbled, because they’d been ordered to curry their horses before turning in, and then, before the horses were cared for, they were ordered to shoot. They had ridden hard, for many long days, and there wasn’t a man or woman without dark circles under their eyes.

Bent, the eldest, an easterner, and Wilful Murder, fresh back from failing to find a murderer’s tracks with the huntsman, ordered the younger men to unload the butts, stuffed with old cloth or woven from straw, from the wagons.

‘Which it isn’t my turn,’ whined Kanny. ‘An’ why are you always picking on us?’ His words might have appeared braver, if he hadn’t waited until Bent was far away before saying them.

Geslin was the youngest man in the company, just fourteen, with a thin frame that suggested he’d never got much food as a boy, climbed one of the tall wagons and silently seized a target and tossed it down to Gadgee, an odd looking man with a swarthy face and foreign features.

Gadgee caught the target with a grunt, and started toward the distant field. ‘Shut up and do some work,’ he said.

Kanny spat. And moved very slowly towards a wagon that didn’t have any targets in it. ‘I’ll just look-’

Bad Tom’s archer, Cuddy, appeared out of nowhere and shoved him ungently towards the wagon where Geslin was readying a second target. ‘Shut up and do some work,’ he said.

He was slow enough that by the time he had his target propped up and ready for use, all nine of the other butts were ready as well. And there were forty archers standing a hundred paces distant, examining their spare strings and muttering about the damp.

Cuddy strung his bow with an economy of motion that belied long practice, and he opened the string that held the arrows he had in his quiver.

‘Shall I open the dance?’ he said.

He nocked, and loosed.

A few paces to his right, Wilful Murder, who fancied himself as good an archer as any man alive, drew and loosed a second later, contorting his body to pull the great war bow.