BOOK I IN THE MOOREHAWKE TRILOGY 14 страница
‘Well,’ murmured the Prince, ‘I suppose a marriage, no matter how ill-advised, is one solution to your hopelessly slandered reputation. Should the worst come to the worst, as it inevitably will with a fellow such as him, we can always wed you off again as a dowered widow.’
‘Alberon,’ she hissed.
He did not turn around.
‘Alberon!’ she insisted.
He tilted his head, which was as far as she suspected he would go towards looking her way.
‘There will be no widowhood in my future, brother. No matter how much my husband sullies the landscape of your plans for me.’
Alberon shrugged. ‘Court life is a danger to us all,’ he said. ‘Nothing lasts forever.’
‘You had better make sure my husband lasts forever, Alberon Kingsson. Crown Prince or not, you will play no courtly games with Christopher Garron’s life. If he so much as stumbles and bruises his knees, I shall . . .’
Footsteps crunched up the dry slope and Wynter snapped to furious silence, certain that Oliver was about to beg access to the Prince. God curse him! Of all the damned times to interrupt. Right at that moment, Wynter did not think that she could face the knight without losing her now hopelessly tenuous self-control.
But it was only Alberon’s lieutenant, and he came to attention with a smart salute, waiting for permission to approach. Alberon waved him at ease and gestured him to speak.
‘Sir Oliver has taken watch with the pickets, your Highness. He sends word from the tree line.’
‘What news?’ asked Alberon.
‘No sign of the supplies, your Highness. It being two days now, and considering what the Lord Razi witnessed by the ford, Sir Oliver is of the belief that the provisioners might have been taken.’
Alberon sighed. ‘It is more than possible. The valleys are crawling with the King’s soldiers. If Sir Oliver is right, and those poor men have been taken, it will only be a matter of time before they crack and tell my father where we are . . . I’m afraid we may have to move again, Marcel, and soon.’
The lieutenant nodded gravely and gazed out across the camp. ‘No need for the men to know it yet, though, Highness. T’would only rattle them.’
‘Aye. In any case, we must await these last envoys. We certainly cannot up stakes till they are here. There is no sign of them, I suppose?’
Wynter saw the lieutenant’s face crease in momentary distaste. ‘No, your Highness,’ he said coldly. ‘No sign.’
Alberon sighed again and dismissed the man. He watched as the lieutenant walked away, then he drew his cloak around him and stood staring pensively out across the trees. His thoughts seemed utterly diverted from Christopher, and Wynter glowered at him – torn between needing to discuss the desperate politics of their situation and the desire to settle the subject of her future once and for all.
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At the back of the tent, something stirred and a thin whine drew Wynter’s attention. With another grim look at the Prince, she crossed to see what it was. On the trunk that acted as Alberon’s bedside table, Marguerite Shirken’s papers rested, their seals as yet unbroken. Wynter glanced suspiciously at them; then she drew the insect-netting aside and looked behind it for the source of the noise.
It was Coriolanus, hidden in his nest of blanket at the foot of the neat cot. The poor creature seemed in the grip of a bad dream, and he mewed hoarsely in his sleep, his little teeth flashing.
Wynter crouched by the bed. ‘Cori,’ she whispered, reaching to stroke him. ‘Cori . . . wake up.’
The cat hissed and lashed out, and Wynter withdrew with a cry, her hand scored with four shallow gashes. She cursed vehemently. ‘Cori!’ she snapped. ‘Wake up!’
His eyes flew open and he lay on his back, staring at her, his small white forepaws held to his bony chest. ‘Cat-servant,’ he rasped.
‘You scratched me.’
He looked at the blood she was sucking from the back of her hand and frowned, rolling to his side. ‘I . . . I was dreaming of my dear mother. The soldiers-who-kill had come again. I was too sick and my mother . . . my mother drew them away. But,’ he squeezed his beautiful eyes shut, ‘but in my dream they came again,’ he whispered. ‘Reaching.’
‘It was only me,’ said Wynter, moved by the poor creature’s obvious distress. ‘I was only going to pet you.’
‘Ahrrrrrr,’ he huffed, flustered. ‘Humans. Always touching. Always grabbing!’ He slid a look at her. ‘Though I am sure I can bring myself to tolerate it if you must lift me.’
Wynter gathered him to her, a fragile collection of brittle warmth, and cradled him like a baby. ‘Your mother still lives, you know,’ she whispered gently. ‘An orange cat told me so. GreyMother hides somewhere in the castle with the last of the kittens.’
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Coriolanus didn’t react to this, except to rub his head against her caressing fingers and gaze into nothing. ‘A flame-coloured cat,’ he murmured, ‘with a heart full of hatred?’
‘How did you know?’
‘SimonSmoke’s tenth daughter, the only flame-coloured cat of her litter. She has no human-given name. She rages against you all now, brave thing. She and her litter-mates were the last of the Palace-born. GreyMother carried them down into the woods, where they live like foxes.’ He sighed. ‘I am surprised she spoke even to you, cat-servant. She must have considered you instrumental.’
‘I think she did. She wanted Razi to learn about the Bloody Machine. I think she thought the discovery would undo the King.’
Coriolanus huffed sleepily. ‘She was wrong. It is the machines’ suppression that has undone him.’ His eyes were growing heavy. ‘You have grown very like your father,’ he murmured. ‘With your fur and eyes, you would both have made handsome cats, had you not been unlucky enough to have been born otherwise.’
‘My father is dead, Cori.’
The cat shrugged, drifting now back into sleep. ‘It will happen to us all,’ he sighed.
‘Cori?’
‘Mmm?’
‘Why is the King suppressing the machines?’
‘Oh, human reasons, for human things . . . how is a sensible cat to understand?’
Alberon came and sat quietly on the cot. Wynter continued to stroke the sleeping cat and would not look up.
‘You must think me unbearably hard,’ said Alberon.
She did not reply.
Alberon reached and touched Cori’s head, just once, then withdrew his hand. ‘Thank you for the letters, Wyn. They meant so much to me all these years.’
She glanced up at him in surprise. ‘You received them? You . . . you never replied.’
He chuckled grimly. ‘What had I to write of? Blood and death and betrayal? The imminent destruction of Father’s wonderful dream? You know I have no art with words, Wyn. I would not have been able to lie, and what would the truth have done for you? Your letters were always so happy, filled with such happy things. I couldn’t bear to hurt that. I couldn’t bear to let you know just how bad everything was.’
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Happy? Was Alberon serious? Wynter had poured her heart and soul into those letters. All those miserable years, how could Alberon have ever thought she was happy?
‘What . . . what did I write of that was so happy?’
Alberon smiled, a genuine smile this time. ‘Oh you know – all your adventures! Your father’s wonderful inventions. The way he smooth-talked all those vile Northlander toadies. Everything. I especially liked when you wrote down your memories of home. I used to love when the messengers came from the North. Those little pages of sunshine arriving in the middle . . . in the middle of what we had become. I would read them and think, This is what we’re struggling for. This is why we must prevail. You have kept me going, Wyn. I read something of yours every day. Look!’ He reached past her, shifted Marguerite’s papers aside, lifted something. ‘See?’ He handed it to her.
Wynter unfolded it with an unsteady hand. The parchment was creased and tattered, the stain from the wax seal still visible at the edge. It was one of her shorter notes, and she remembered clearly the day she had written it. It had been a particularly hard day – the end of a long week of mass trials in the Shirkens’ castle. They had burned the convicted in batches of ten. Wynter remembered writing this letter with shaking hands, her ears filled with screaming, her window filled with smoke. Until now, she had recalled only that awfulness; the actual contents of the letter had not been part of her memory. Her writing shocked her; how legible and steady it was.
My Dearest Brother,
How much I miss you! I was thinking today of the time we stole the cakes from the Moroccan ambassador’s birthday feast. Do you recall? We were dressed up stiff as coffin mummies in our brocades; still you managed to pilfer seven jam tarts and an entire cinnamon cake. The stains they left on your pockets! You said cake always tasted better eaten beneath the table, and so we sat surrounded by legs, stuffing our little faces while a discreet panic consumed the staff! Razi (of course) was the one to find us. I recall his brief grin as he peered beneath the cloth, then his voice – it was pure Razi – ‘Father, I am certain they are not here. I have searched every inch and there’s naught below but Mama’s little dog.’ Oh! I am laughing aloud now.
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Tell me you recollect this!
Alberon’s quiet voice brought her back to the tent and he took the letter, folding it and putting it away again. ‘I have kept them all, you know. I have most of them back at the palace, in my trunk. Safe in my room.’
Wynter felt her face fall at that – the palace had been stripped of every possible reminder of Alberon. She hardly imagined that his room had been left intact. He must have seen something of this in her expression, because his eyes slipped from hers and he cleared his throat.
‘How is Razi?’ he asked quietly.
‘Oh, Albi, why do you not ask him yourself, instead of just telling him to comb his hair and shave his face as if nothing had happened. Why must you act the prince around him?’
‘Oh, please! He has done nothing but act the politician since he got here! He’d talk knots into a string, that man! I feel like I am wrestling a God-cursed eel every time he opens his mouth!’
Wynter huffed. ‘That is just Razi, Alberon; he has never been any different.’
‘He was never thus with me.’
You never before gave him reason to be, thought Wynter. But she did not articulate it. ‘He has only the best of intentions,’ she said. ‘You are his brother, Albi. He loves you dearly – you know this.’
‘I . . . I shall try harder to hold my patience.’ Alberon glanced at her. ‘He really approves this match of yours?’ At her warning look, he spread his hands in defeat. ‘I suppose between us both we can afford to support you,’ he sighed. ‘You and your gypsy.’
Wynter gritted her teeth against a reply.
‘I am sorry about Lorcan, Wyn. I want you to know that. It must seem that I do not care, but I do. It is so difficult, these days, to react to things the way one should.’ Alberon’s attention drifted to the door and he watched the insectnetting blow in the breeze. ‘I am calm, or I am angry,’ he said softly. ‘There seems to be nothing in between.’
‘Why did our fathers suppress the machine, Albi?’
‘I don’t know!’ he cried, animated once again by his frustration. ‘It makes no sense to me! Father simply dragged it into the light one moment, then pushed it back into the shadows the next. It was madness! We had already lost so many men! Things had come so damn close. Then to find that we’d had, all along, the ability to make these wonderful machines! That we’d actually had one to hand and had not used it until the very last moment? My God, Wynter!’ he lowered his forehead onto his clenched fists, his face hidden.
‘My God, I was so angry I almost killed him.’
‘Don’t say that.’
‘I’m only talking to you,’ he mumbled. ‘I’d never say it out loud.’
‘Well, it is a little late for caution in any case. The poor man thinks you mean to usurp him, Alberon. It has broken his heart.’
He shook his head. ‘I can’t let it go, Wyn. I simply know that this will work.’
Wynter stroked the cat and carefully considered her words. ‘I think that certain aspects of your plan have flaws. This marriage to Marguerite Shirken, for example.’
He looked up at her from between his fists. ‘Are we about to trade insults over marriage partners, Wyn?’
She tightened her jaw and slid him another warning look. ‘As I was saying, your plan has flaws. I think you could do with sitting down with your courtly brother and discussing some of the finer details. But on the whole, Alberon, I agree with you. I think the production of more machines is this kingdom’s great hope. I cannot understand our fathers’ suppression of them.’
Alberon lifted his head to gaze at her in wonder, and he looked so like her childhood memory of him that Wynter nearly cried. ‘Really?’ he asked.
‘Really,’ she whispered.
‘And Razi?’
She dropped her eyes. ‘Razi can be persuaded. Later.’
‘Oh . . . I see.’
He sighed, and there was a moment’s thoughtful silence between them.
‘That Haun,’ said Wynter, ‘I think he knew my father.’
‘The youngest one? Their linguist?’ At her nod, Alberon pushed wearily to his feet and went to the door, looking down into the camp. The insect-netting blew about him in the wind, and he looked like a red-clad ghost seen through mist. ‘He is a strange fellow. I think he might be mad. I suspect he was one of the Lost Hundred.’
Wynter startled at that. The thought had not even occurred to her. ‘He would have been very young when the Haun were sent east,’ she said doubtfully.
‘Aye. But think about it, sis. His excellent Southlandast, his fine manners. He has a feel of the palace about him, don’t you think?’
Wynter stroked the cat and thought about that. It certainly would explain a lot. The young Haun would have been perhaps six or so in the aftermath of the Haun Invasion, and so it would be possible that he could remember her father. Particularly if his family was among the Lost Hundred and was connected in some way with the life of the palace. Of all the Haun sent east, it was those Southlands-born nobles and businessmen – the so-called Hundred Lost Families – that had suffered the most. The young Haun’s family would have lost everything when Jonathon’s father expelled the Haunardii from the Southlands. No wonder he was so bitter. That kind of injustice would spread rage through generation after generation of the dispossessed.
Wynter’s stomach went cold suddenly and she looked over at Alberon, her eyes wide with unwanted inspiration. They had been told that the Lost Hundred had been sent back east. That their goods had been piled onto their well bred backs, their weeping families loaded into carts, and their land and businesses redistributed among the Southland aristocracy. But what if it was even colder than that? What if something else entirely had been done? Something that so ate at Lorcan and Jonathon’s consciences that they could not bring themselves to articulate it – even to each other.
‘Albi,’ she whispered, ‘did you see that man’s back?’
Alberon did not seem to hear her. His attention was fixed on a point at the far end of the camp, and as Wynter spoke he drew back the insect-netting and frowned in concentration.
‘What is it?’ she said.
On her lap, Coriolanus tensed, and his claws exposed briefly in his sleep. ‘No . . .’ he whined. ‘No.’
In the camp, the warhounds suddenly began to howl.
‘What is it, Albi?’ she said again, gently placing the cat into his nest and crossing to join the Prince.
Alberon stepped outside. ‘A messenger from the pickets,’ he said. ‘My envoys must be here.’ He lifted his hand to the rider just arrived at the base of the slope, and the man nodded, wheeled his horse around and trotted back towards the barricades.
‘We shall have to chain those damn hounds,’ mused Alberon.
Indeed, the warhounds were going mad. Wynter could hear them baying and howling down among the tents. At the base of the slope, Christopher was standing with his back to her, his attention focused on the far end of the camp, and something in his posture set Wynter on edge. He looked like a dog that has scented trouble. As she watched, he began to walk in the direction of the barricades. Then, without warning, he broke into a jog. Within moments, Christopher was running.
On the main thoroughfare, Sólmundr and Razi emerged from between the tents, their faces turned expectantly towards the barricades. They must have heard that there was a new arrival and come to see. Christopher shot past them. Razi called after him, but Christopher ran by without looking his way. Sól and Razi began to follow, but the young man was already far ahead of them.
Dodging and weaving through the curious men now crowding the road, Christopher seemed utterly focused on getting to the gates. The frantic baying of the hounds urged him on, and Wynter followed his desperate progress with increasingly cold alarm.
‘Alberon,’ she whispered, ‘who are your envoys?’
Alberon just watched the barricades, his face attentive.
Fez. He had said that they were coming from Fez. Wynter followed the Prince’s gaze to the end of camp, and when the Loups-Garous rode their horses through the barricades she felt no surprise at all.
AGAIN
AT THE sight of the Loups-Garous, Christopher came to a staggering halt, his knees bent, his arms spread as if to catch a thrown ball. He remained frozen like that, stricken, and Wynter was absolutely certain that he was going to simply stand there and allow the Wolves to advance upon him. She began to dash down the hill, scanning the road as she did, searching for Razi.
Behind her, Alberon called an order to one of his men. ‘Tell the Merron to secure those God-cursed hounds or I shall have them shot.’
Shoving her way past a knot of soldiers at the base of the hill, Wynter caught sight of Razi. He was standing openmouthed at the edge of the road. Sólmundr was shaking his arm and speaking impatiently, as if trying to get his attention. Wynter bit down the urge to scream Razi’s name and veered for him, dodging quickly through the soldiers and the rising dust. As she approached, Razi mumbled something to Sól. The warrior stepped back, shocked, then spun with a cry, frantically scanning the road. He spotted Christopher, still frozen in the Wolves’ path, and began to run towards him.
But at that very moment – just as it seemed utterly certain that the Wolves would see him – Christopher jerked to sudden life. He crouched, reached for his katar, realised it was not at his hip, then turned and darted away between the tents. Sólmundr, still only halfway to his young friend, slammed to a halt and cut right, heading in the same direction as Christopher.
Wynter slid to Razi’s side. At the same moment, Úlfnaor strode from between the tents. ‘Who is these men?’ he asked, squinting at the Wolves. ‘They from the King?’ Then he got a look at the wolf-skins draped across the horses’ rumps, and his face went cold and dangerous.
Oliver was leading the Wolves into camp, his dappled mare skittish next to David Le Garou’s big dark stallion. As he urged the shying horse onto the thoroughfare, Wynter saw Oliver’s eyes inadvertently settle on Razi. The knight’s face creased up in misery and he averted his gaze.
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