FIVE

FLANKED BY THE soldiers, I examined our route as we walked, my apprehension building with every turning. It was immediately apparent we weren’t headed back to the sanctuary, and gradually I became sure the cells weren’t our destination either. It had to be the throne room, I thought, until my escorts led me instead to the skein of offices tucked behind the public façade.

The place was thick with soldiers. Every single one of them stared at me – some of them sidelong, but most of them openly. Bedraggled and soiled as it was, my finery still marked me as highborn, and a target; no doubt they were startled to see me alive.

It was a dangerous ploy I dared. Under those mercenary eyes, to accept my fate and die at the hands of a military coup seemed suddenly easier than to match wits against those behind tonight’s massacre.

Left outside while my arrival was announced, and still feverishly trying to work out who had attacked, I went back through the details of my vision. I had stood – shrouded, yes, but untouched – in the flames which consumed all else. Death was not my fate. Yet.

Counting flecks on the walls to distract myself from shaking, I was startled when the door cracked open before I reached a hundred. A flick of a soldier’s head ushered me inside.

Mentally preparing myself for whoever I might meet, I did my best to sail regally into the room, making it into the middle before my step faltered.

The man in front of me was a complete stranger. He stood, one hip resting upon the edge of the desk, arms crossed and chin turned towards his right shoulder, watching me aslant. That narrow and knowing glance, coupled with the unrelieved black of his clothing and the pale eyes beneath dark brows and close-cropped dark hair, minded me of a raven.

My heart gave a great painful thump against my ribs. The fact that he was unknown to me made his motives unfathomable – and his reactions difficult to predict. Was this perhaps the slave-born general so favoured by Ilthea’s emperor? He didn’t have the look of Ilthea about him, but the empire took slaves from all the varied corners of the known world.

His gaze picked over my appearance, from the swan necklace Helena had given me to the garnets and diamonds threaded through my hair in deference to the colours of House Svanaten. The gleam in his eye made me wonder if he knew of me by more than symbols and repute. Had there been a turncoat in my court, supplying him with intelligence?

‘So,’ he said, with a speculative look. ‘You survived.’

His voice had the quick, murky accents of the northwest, and with a jolt that stole the air from my lungs the truth dawned on me. He wasn’t Ilthean – he was from the Marsachen, the first tribe. They had not attended the gadderen, nor responded to any emissaries, in living history. In my life there had been reports, from Oren’s agents and from the Somner drightens, of the Marsachen’s growing strength, and a new leader who had conquered the northern islands and even the fabled lands beyond.

Grandmother had always dismissed any potential threat from them as insignificant in light of Ilthea’s expansion.

The thought of standing mute before him, giving him the opportunity to mock and dismiss me, spurred me out of my shock and into speaking.

‘Are you surprised?’ I said.

‘A little,’ he replied, his face giving nothing away.

‘A woman with no resources would be of no value to you.’ I spoke as casually as if we’d had this conversation before, as if the whole of my part in this play had been planned.

He smiled, though it wasn’t reassuring. ‘No,’ he said. ‘She wouldn’t.’

I sifted through what else I might proffer, but came up with precious little. If Oren lived, and was loyal, I could control access to his network of information – but that was a lot of maybes to hang my life upon. I could bring the Marsachen lord alliances with those tribes loyal to House Svanaten, perhaps – if those loyalties hadn’t already shifted in his favour.

Silence prowled the edges of the room as we waited – I for his decision, he for me to break. Damned if I’d beg. Survival was one thing, self-abasement another. So I set my teeth and offered a tiny shrug; let the man interpret it as indifference or submission or contempt as he may.

After what seemed an eternity he pushed up from the desk. ‘Right, then. Let’s make it official, shall we? After all, I could use a resourceful wife,’ he said, his smile taunting me.

I tried to keep my face expressionless, unsure of his sincerity but, trapped by my own ploy, unable to question him further. With an open hand and a tilt of his head he gestured for me to precede him out of the room, then signalled to someone behind me.

I turned, and for the first time realised we were not alone. A second man stood in the corner not far from me. His face was long and keen, too refined to belong to a bluff trade like soldiering. His slender fingers bore scars and calluses from his work, however, and a scar nicked his right eyebrow and ear. He wore the same garb as the soldiers now infesting the Turholm, except his tunic bore an emblem: a crouching weasel, white on black. The information didn’t help. I’d never encountered a white weasel before, thane or mercenary. Like his lord, he didn’t bother with an introduction and I glided past his blank stare and continued on my way.

My apparent betrothed walked beside me. He didn’t glance at me that I could catch, but I had no doubt he was observing me, keen for a reaction. Soon enough I reasoned why: he was leading us back to the sanctuary hall.

My step faltered as we emerged into the crisp pre-dawn air of the upper courtyard and I saw the austere line of the hall’s roof breaking the skyline.

He caught at my elbow, all false solicitousness. ‘Are you too tired, perhaps?’

‘A loose stone underfoot,’ I lied.

Pushing down the fear – which tasted like blood bubbling in my throat – I let him lead me onwards. Inside the sanctuary, the bodies of the fallen had been dragged into haphazard heaps along one wall. I gagged on the smell of it, fresh slaughter trapped in a place of worship, seething and stewing and clamouring for the sky.

Alone among the dead, Grandmother lay on her back on one of the pews near the altar, her eyes closed and arms crossed as if laid out on a bier. The arrows which had killed her had been snapped off so only small jagged stumps of wood protruded from her flesh. The apparent mark of respect surprised me, and I glanced at the man who’d triggered all this carnage.

Still grasping my elbow, he stepped us up to the altar, then said, ‘Surprised I haven’t put her head on a spike? This way is more practical. I look reasonable – and I give the people the chance to see she really is dead. Gerlach,’ he ordered, gesturing the weasel-liveried soldier forward. ‘If you’d do the honours?’

I struggled for calm. He was going to kill me after all. He was calling my bluff. I had nothing left to bargain and my first subterfuge had stripped me of the dignity of honesty. His face said he knew it all and hoped to see me grovelling in the blood of my own court and kin before he had his man, Gerlach, despatch me.

My knees collapsed and I fell to the floor with a thump. Gerlach reached out and put his hand on my brow. Though he must have felt the fear flushing heat through my skin and the slick of sweat beneath the pads of his dry fingers, his long face gave no indication of it.

I trembled, my lips parched as I waited for the final slice of steel across my throat. But Gerlach’s lord didn’t draw out his dirk. Instead he knelt beside me, and Gerlach touched him too, upon the forehead.

Done with any pretence at self-control now, I stared at the man who had killed my family, who was looking up at Gerlach. At his lord’s nod, Gerlach began to intone. They weren’t the words of any binding ceremony I knew, and I’d never heard of a soldier sanctifying a binding, but the import was clear enough. My bowels turned to water with the relief and the sick, sick hope of life rising in me.

Kneeling amid the carnage of my court and clad and tangled in their blood, I bound my life to the man who had engineered the slaughter.