ELEVEN

ROUSED IN DARKNESS by a rough shake, I scrambled straight from sleep to blind panic. Had they found Renatas? Perhaps the boy had grown hungry and ventured into the kitchen before everyone slept, or perhaps Amalia had followed me, in spite of all the care I took –

The feeble light of a candle flame struggled to relieve the darkness. Incapable of reaching the room’s corners, it was enough to reveal Amalia standing over me, laughter in her foxfire eyes. ‘Morning isn’t your best time, is it?’

Understanding came too late to slow my thumping heart. ‘We’re leaving?’ I asked, glancing around the room, trying to gauge the time. When Dieter had said to be ready early, I hadn’t suspected that meant before dawn. ‘Now?’

‘Diet’s already dressed,’ she said. As was she. ‘Probably mounted by now, too. I’d say you have about five minutes.’

Necessity gave me speed. I pulled on the clothes Amalia handed me, then grabbed my makeshift veil and knotted it in place before she hurried me through the corridors. We emerged into the glimmering dawn to find Dieter and his men ready to depart.

A handful of soldiers waited in a cluster by the doorway, Mathis among them. They hurried me atop a horse so fast we were trotting out in Dieter’s wake before I’d even finished gathering my reins.

Clouds blew in soon after the sun rose, chilling the air and dimming the landscape. The rain arrived during the first afternoon, a steady drumming which turned the grass to slops. Our pace slowed to a crawl as the horses climbed rain-slick slopes. For the first time I was grateful for my veil: I could pull the tail of it forward to shield my numb cheeks and chin from the worst of the downpour.

It took three rain-filled days for us to cross the eastern arm of the Dragonstail mountains, days I spent hunched inside my oilcloth wrap, wondering what lay ahead. On the fourth day we crossed into the border lands, descending the skirts of the mountains to the vast, empty plains that, further east, beyond the River Pela, became the steppes. There was a palpable change in the way we rode, a stiffening of the shoulders, and a deepening of the seat on the horse’s back. It was as if the immeasurable span of the sky pressed us down.

These lands supported few holdings, all of them belonging to the Sueben tribe and beholden therefore to House Svanaten. Good feeling for my House ran thin here, however. My father had taken a barbarian bride from the Nilofen, one of the fiercest and mightiest Skythe tribes, buying an army to guard our eastern border, and surcease from raids. In return, however, he had ceded to the Nilofen the right to winter here. Nigh-barren by Turasi standards, these lands were yet richer and gentler than the steppes, the Skythes’ traditional homelands. Grandmother had been forced to give substantial tax concessions to pacify those thanes whose lands were annually invaded and, they claimed, denuded.

Directions from the first holding we reached sent us northeast, and on the seventh afternoon smoke from distant fires muddied the horizon. We would reach the Nilofen on the morrow. I shrugged my wrap tighter, grateful that the rain had stopped, and wondered what reception I might find. I did not even know if any of my mother’s immediate family still lived.

Hoofbeats roused me from my reverie. Gerlach had nudged his mount over to my side, proffering a heel of bread smeared with thick, cheesy butter.

‘Thanks,’ I said, hunger not allowing me to refuse it.

He simply nodded, and rode alongside in silence while I ate, then offered me a swallow from the flask at his saddle horn. What I expected to be water turned out to be liquor, its hot spice so unexpected I nearly choked on it. Instead, just as undignified, I croaked.

Gerlach took back the flask with a faint smile, hooking it onto his saddle with practised ease.

‘I’ve not seen you smile before,’ I said on impulse.

‘I’ve had little reason of late,’ he said, a sparkle in his eyes.

I hovered on the edge of questioning him. How much, if any, of Dieter’s military strength was mercenary, and therefore of questionable loyalty? What was Dieter’s faith, and Gerlach’s, that allowed a man to be both prester and soldier? Asking might mean the end of his good humour, though, and it wouldn’t yield answers. Amalia, with her fierce pride, would be easier to goad into talking. So I let the moment pass.

He watched me as if he’d read my thoughts, but when I didn’t speak, said, ‘Your husband would like a moment. When you’re ready.’

Of a sudden I was glad I hadn’t pried. Dieter’s summons wouldn’t have included food, and time to eat it in peace – that had been the general’s idea.

Sombre now, I took the time to meet his gaze. ‘Thank you. For the moment’s grace, I mean.’

‘Come,’ he replied. ‘We shouldn’t delay longer.’

Together, we picked a way through the moving crowd until we came abreast of Dieter. He was riding one of his own horses, a dove-chested fleabit mare. Gerlach fell back then, though I didn’t doubt he could still hear every word we exchanged.

‘Tell me about these people of yours,’ said Dieter, holding his reins in one hand, idly pulling the spare length through the fingers of his other.

‘I’ve never been this far from the Turholm before.’ My legs were too taut, the pressure urging my mare into a trot. I pulled her back with a soft curse for my nervousness. ‘I’m hardly an expert.’

‘Your mother lived past childbirth – you know something of them.’

‘A little, yes.’

‘Enough to insist I journey out instead of inviting them to me.’

I decided to gamble on the truth. If he was ignorant, it was giving up an advantage. But he had travelled and, in all likelihood, had learned of the Skythes’ ways already, making this a test. One I couldn’t afford to fail.

‘What do you want to know?’ I asked.

‘The best way to win their alliance would be a start.’

I swallowed my rising fear. ‘I don’t know, not for sure. Family’s my best guess. Otherwise … I suppose we find a bargain.’

‘Profound,’ he said, cutting me a mocking glance. ‘And the horses you had me bring – those are your bargaining chips?’

I looked back towards the baggage train. A handful of my House’s prize mounts picked their way across the slippery ground, their hides rugged against the weather.

‘Potentially,’ I said. ‘My mother brought Skythe horses as part of her binding contract. My father bred some Trakkan blood into them. He hoped to breed a horse with the looks of the Skythe mounts and the endurance of the Trakkans.’

‘Did he succeed?’

I shrugged. ‘More to the point, will the Skythes care? They value their horses, and that includes the purity of the line. Although of course I hope they’ll find the new line intriguing – they’ve better pulling strength and a longer lifespan, both of which could prove useful on the steppes.’

‘You’re saying the creatures I’m forcibly dragging up and down flooding hillsides in the hopes of winning an alliance might, in actual fact, offend these people?’

‘More or less,’ I said, then clamped my lips shut over an insane urge to giggle.

‘Tremendous. That’s truly …’ he hesitated over a curse, and finished with a sarcastic, ‘tremendous.’

‘My mother had a saying, from her people,’ I said. ‘She used to say, “Life isn’t fair. The sooner you learn, the faster you grow bitter.”’

‘Meaning?’ said Dieter after a moment’s puzzled silence. ‘What context did she use it in?’

‘I have no idea. Sometimes she was bitter, or not bitter so much as melancholy. Mostly, though, she was laughing. Usually at me.’

He laughed, and without time for thought I found myself smiling at him. Then, confused by my response, I looked away.

‘Tell me about her,’ said Dieter.

I shrugged, hesitating over a range of responses. ‘She … died when I was young. I don’t remember much. Nothing that can help in bargaining, leastways.’

‘You might be surprised,’ he said, then looked ahead awhile, apparently lost in thought.

What was he thinking of? The bargains he might strike?

‘Tell me about your mother,’ I said.

He looked at me askance, brows cocked.

‘What?’ I said. ‘You asked about mine. It’s only fair.’

‘If you take after your mother, driving a bargain with these people could prove difficult.’

‘Turn and turn about,’ I said, refusing to be distracted. ‘Besides, you claimed royal blood when we first met, but I don’t recognise your crest, if it’s your crest Gerlach wears.’

‘It isn’t,’ he said, not elaborating on what was, or whose crest the weasel was.

‘She wasn’t a woman to be trifled with,’ he added after a while. ‘Although my father, may the ravens devour his canny soul, tried to anyway.’

‘And the result?’

‘Ask my brother some time,’ he said, then spurred his horse ahead.