THIRTY-TWO

THEIR COVER BLOWN, a swarm of the southern serpents pushed forward out of the pines, spears raised, eyes hard behind the cheekplates of their helmets.

‘Hold!’ cried the foremost, the Turasi word rough and guttural in his mouth. A red horsehair crest topped his helmet, marking him as an officer.

My heart thudded at the sharp spears levelled at us.

‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ Roshi hissed.

If he hadn’t been supporting half her weight, I think Sepp might have sunk to his knees then and there.

‘I seek an audience with Sidonius,’ I said, hazarding what little of the southern tongue I knew.

The name brought a shuttering of their gazes, their spear-tips dipping a little before settling once again on a line for my heart.

‘Naturally,’ the officer answered in Turasi. ‘But why should he grant you an audience?’

I hesitated. I could proffer my name and former position, but an ousted queen meant only supplication for aid, which was not the best opening gambit. His men would, at best, laugh and enslave me as a quaint spoil of war.

‘Because water can run hard as a rockfall, and the earth can boil like a pool of water over a geyser,’ I said at last. ‘If the right person bids it.’

To a man they stilled, eyes wary. It was clear they’d been watching our battle with Clay. The release of the staked rope might have been a fortuitous accident from their vantage, but not the way I had buried Clay.

‘You expect us to let you within sight of the general?’ the officer said. ‘What else can you do, witch? Bring down a mountain on his head, perhaps, or set the trees alight around him?’

‘I value my own life too highly for such tactics, Captain.’ Was it weariness that made my voice so calm, as if my life might not be ended by the thrust of a spear at any moment? ‘Besides, I don’t wish him dead. In fact, I come to ask his aid.’

I wondered how far downstream Clay had washed ashore, and whether a creature of his ilk succumbed to weariness or wound. None of it crossed my face as I waited for the captain to make his decision.

‘You’ll keep your powers in check, witch,’ he said at last. ‘One hint of anything unnatural and we’ll slice you open.’

‘Naturally.’

‘Get behind her,’ the officer barked at two of his men. ‘If she twitches, run her through.’ He paused and regarded Roshi and Sepp, as if wondering what powers they might summon. ‘The rest of you watch the other two,’ he snapped, then bid us all move with a curt gesture.

Steel-tipped spears touching my back, I followed his red crest into the shadow of the pines.

 

It took the better part of a day to reach the main camp. It was a regimented affair: hooded bedrolls in precision lines, a circle of stones to mark a cookfire every sixth place, a thicket of spears and swords every second.

The foreign soldiers glanced at us only in passing as we were led through their midst, their assessment of us as prisoners obvious in their slack, distant expressions. Some stared a little longer, quick enough to wonder what it was about us, filthy and bedraggled and without obvious assets, that warranted a personal escort instead of a swift throat-slitting. But even they dismissed us soon enough: not my problem, I read in the glaze of their eyes.

It made me shiver.

In a Turasi army, the arrival of any new factor warranted speculation and investigation. It could provide leverage, after all, or an opportunity to wrangle more standing in the alliance. These southerners were different – cold and impartial. They would stand their ground – and accept their position – without question. Could the fractious, scheming Turasi hold against such discipline?

The officer motioned us to a halt in the camp’s centre – a great open space, rectangular to a fault. On the opposite side stood the full tents, more utilitarian than luxurious. We watched as he approached the centremost tent alone. After slipping his helmet and crest off short-cropped hair, he ducked inside.

To calm the anxiety flooding through me, I occupied myself with mustering arguments for my meeting with Sidonius. Any slight movement – smoothing a sweaty palm over my skirts, or flicking a wisp of tickling hair from my cheek – made the soldiers sharp-eyed. When I reached down to scratch an itch on my calf, one of them threatened me with his spear. ‘None of your tricks, witch.’

It was almost funny. I was so staggeringly weary, I could barely stand. A sheen of grey overlaid everything, as if I viewed the world through a pane of imperfect glass.

Finally the officer returned to the entrance and gestured me forward. A poke in the small of my back with the flat of a blade got my legs moving before I was ready, and I stumbled. Another soldier jerked me up by my bicep. ‘None of that now, either,’ he barked.

I said nothing, too tired to correct him.

‘Just the witch,’ the officer said, when Roshi and Sepp tried to follow me.

I glanced back, and Roshi gave me a look heavy with meaning: Bargain well, cousin. Beside her, Sepp kept his head down and his shoulders hunched.

I ducked into the tent, with the officer immediately behind me. All my senses felt on high alert, taking in the lamps throwing shadows around the single, cloth-walled room. Braziers either side of the entrance radiated warmth and the sweet, cloying stench of burning dung. A man stood with his back to me, bent over a table in the centre of the tent.

The officer prodded me further inside. ‘The witch, General,’ he said.

The man straightened and turned. His eyes were pale and piercing as frost. Amalia’s eyes. Ravens above, it seemed he was Dieter’s brother. How then had he come by an Ilthean name and army?

‘Sidonius,’ I said.

‘My men did not bother to learn your name. I presume you have one?’ he greeted me in turn.

‘Matilde,’ I replied, opting against meekness. ‘Daughter of Luitger Svanaten and Laleh of the Nilofen, niece of Helena Svanaten, granddaughter of Beata – rightful Duethin of the Turasi. You speak my language well.’

Good, child, Grandmother murmured in the back of my mind. Disarm him, unsettle him. Settled is certain. You can’t afford for him to be certain against you.

‘I should do,’ he returned. ‘It’s my milk-tongue. Which is how I know that anyone who can take and hold the throne is the only rightful Duethin.’

‘Anyone with might enough can take the throne, General. Holding it is the trick.’

‘Indeed,’ he said, with a crooked smile.

I wrapped my arms around my ribs, nursing the pain. ‘Might I enquire as to your purpose, General? I can’t help but notice you’re marching an army unerringly towards my palace.’

‘My brother’s palace, actually, at this precise moment,’ he corrected. ‘And throne, too – although he’ll soon be sitting it under the auspices of the Ilthean emperor.’

Sidonius’s clear confidence sent chills down my spine. If Dieter and he had an alliance, my ploy was beyond foolhardy. The memory of Clay, however, and his implacable grip on my leg, firmed my resolve. Allied with Dieter or not, Sidonius was the only thing between me and the golem right now.

‘If he refuses?’ I said, keeping my fear in check with an effort.

‘He’ll be vacating it in favour of one less squeamish.’

‘I see,’ I said, letting a smile touch my lips.

He pushed a stool towards me with a foot, inviting me to sit with a lift of his chin. I didn’t hesitate: pride could only keep me upright for so long. A throne is a state of mind, child, Grandmother added, so I inclined my head in a gesture learnt at her knee and, spreading my skirts as if they were the glorious garb of a queen, I sat. My ribs sent a burst of pain through my lungs at the movement, forcing me to clutch the seat’s edge before I could regain my breath.

Sidonius leant back against his table and crossed his arms over his chest. ‘I suppose this is where you tell me how you come into the picture?’

‘I am his wife, General. One might imagine he’d be eager to see me returned,’ I said, offering an elusive smile.

‘One might also imagine he’s already taken what he needs from you,’ Sidonius countered.

‘I presume your men told you of the creature we escaped.’

Though he neither assented nor denied it, the flicker of interest in his eyes told me they had.

‘It was wrought by my husband, to recapture me,’ I continued.

Sidonius glanced over my head, seeking confirmation from the officer. I prayed the distance had clouded their vision enough for the encounter to have appeared as though Clay was trying to capture me, not kill me. Behind me, the officer must have assented.

‘So he wants you back,’ Sidonius said. ‘Why?’

‘I dare say he wants an heir, General. Men in the midst of building empires generally do.’

‘An exceedingly good reason for me not to return you to him.’

‘Fine by me,’ I shot back, though it came out more quietly than I’d have liked, my voice nigh buried by the pain of Dieter’s betrayal. Perhaps that helped. ‘I thought we were looking for ways to bend Dieter to your will. I never insisted you honour your bargains.’

He grunted. ‘You would have made a good Ilthean matron.’

‘I am my aunt’s niece.’

His pale gaze, so like Amalia’s, pinned me, and again I wondered at his ancestry, how he and Dieter fitted together as kin. To judge by his looks he was between Dieter and Amalia in age. How had the middle child landed in the snake’s pit when the elder and younger had not?

‘Indeed,’ he said, pushing up and away from the table, then turning back to study whatever it was he had weighted to its surface.

Unseen currents tugged at me, threatening to pull me under. ‘You mean to put Renatas on the throne?’ I asked.

‘When he’s of an age,’ he replied matter-of-factly.

‘In the meantime?’

‘A boy can’t rule in his own right, lady. He’ll need a regent,’ he said, his gaze fixed on the shadow tracery of branches behind the tent wall.

Naturally. Grandmother’s voice merged with my own thought as I measured his profile – Turasi man, clad in Ilthean garb. ‘And what better man for the job of regent than the emperor’s most loyal general?’ I said. ‘You aim high, considering your start in the slave pits.’

He laughed. ‘Oh, I will not be regent, lady, although I will remain to advise the boy, if my emperor bids it.’

‘Then who?’

‘The boy’s father is the obvious choice,’ Sidonius said, ‘but Jurgas Avita Angeron, may he reign forever, has granted me discretion in the matter.’

I strove for calm. ‘Then might I suggest, General, that the boy’s cousin is an equally obvious choice.’

‘Given you want the throne for yourself, and I can’t see you sitting in it again unless you bend your neck to the emperor, I don’t see how we can bargain, lady.’

‘What makes you think I can’t bend my neck?’ I said, my mouth dry.

‘Lady, as you say: you are your aunt’s niece.’

Surprise stretched my eyes wide.

‘Didn’t you know?’ he laughed. ‘She was a matron of impeccable degree, there’s none will dispute it. But her arrival on the southern border was not accidental.’

‘It was at the head of an army,’ I said. ‘This army.’ The army that would put her son on the throne and bring my people under the empire’s yoke. Except Helena’s army had been led by her husband, or so I had assumed. Was Sidonius her husband?

‘The army was certainly quick on her trail, but we marched to bring the traitorous bitch to heel,’ said Sidonius.

My heart twisted, images of Helena floating to the surface of my memory: her face, made pale by make-up which couldn’t soften the flash of her eyes; her flagrant red dress, her laughter, her hand limply reaching for her throat and the arrow as she collapsed, the life fading from her.

The pain of it thickened my voice. ‘Yet you’ll still put her son on the throne?’

‘The boy is the one who betrayed her,’ said Sidonius, his eyes hard as flint. ‘He has an Ilthean heart. As do I. And I will do as my emperor bids.’

Struggling for composure, I wondered why this blow should surprise me. Renatas had turned on me, after all. But betray his mother, and at such a tender age?

‘You’ll have a hard time of it,’ I said. ‘Put an Ilthean on the throne and you’ll have to beat every Turasi into submission – individually.’

He shrugged. ‘The boy has Turasi blood, remember? Svanaten, no less.’

‘But an Ilthean heart,’ I countered. ‘And House Svanaten hasn’t enjoyed a great deal of fortune or popularity of late. In fact,’ dazed and stupid with pain, the words slipped out of me, ‘the boy’s probably dead already.’

Sidonius was before me in a stride, plucking me from the stool with a fist clutching my gown before pulling me close. ‘Who would dare touch him?’

‘Dieter, for one. To punish me,’ I said, battling to hide my terror and gritting my teeth against the starbursts of pain from my ribs. ‘Any of the drightens, for another.’ A whimper escaped me, despite my resolve.

Sidonius collected himself with an effort, uncurling his fingers one at a time.

My heels dropped to the floor and I took a cautious step back. The stool caught my legs, dropping me onto the floor. Pain exploded up my spine, blurring my vision. When it cleared, Sidonius was pacing the length of the tent wall off to my right.

He stopped, turned on a heel and looked over my head. ‘Leave us,’ he said.

The crested officer must have hesitated, for Sidonius switched his gaze to me. ‘I’m sure the lady will stay her powers. Besides, she’s too tired to stand without help, let alone work any more shadows.’

Behind me the officer clapped a palm to his breastplate and soon the slap of the tent-flap told of his departure.

‘So, my lady,’ said Sidonius, ‘you are in my power.’

‘True, but you are also in mine.’ The quaver of weariness in my voice, and the way my shoulders hunched around my broken rib, undermined my attempt at bravado.

‘And what is the price for lending me that power, instead of turning it against me?’

‘My throne, of course.’

He tilted his head in the beginnings of a refusal.

‘I’m not yet of age, you know,’ I forestalled him. ‘Not for another year.’ I swallowed hard after daring the lie. Bargain well, cousin. Iltheans didn’t come of age until twenty, and it had been Iltheans who raised him – from birth, if I was lucky. If he didn’t know the Turasi came of age at seventeen I might have a chance of emerging unscathed.

‘You’re a married woman,’ he countered. ‘By Ilthean standards, that qualifies.’

I chewed on my lower lip, reconsidering. He would not grant me the throne under the auspice of an Ilthean regent, then.

Which is no misfortune – a serpent with a toehold is a serpent embedded, Grandmother warned.

Her words were all too true, but I could see no other way out of this with my skin intact, so scraped together my courage, and spoke.

‘Very well. What must I do to earn your trust?’

He snorted. ‘The last Turasi woman I knew betrayed even her marriage vows for her country. My own brother thought nothing of sacrificing me for his gain. I don’t know what bond those marks on your brow signify, but I expect it’s not a slight one. Which you’ve broken.’

I couldn’t speak of them, not to tell him they were involuntary, nor to tell him they still bound me.

I wanted to rise, to stretch my legs and pace, hide my desperation behind movement. Or better yet, to flee. Gather Roshi and Sepp in my wake and run, fast as the swirl of snow on winter winds. But it wasn’t winter, there was no wind, and pain and exhaustion pinned me where I sat; besides, we’d be recaptured in moments.

‘General.’ I paused, swallowing my hesitation, firming my resolve and voice both. ‘If it means blood will not be spilled, I will lend my power to you. The palace shelters every person left in my world. I would keep them safe.’

‘No. It’s not enough. I need your power pledged to me, not on loan. If I thought hostages would do it, I’d have reminded you of the pair sitting outside.’

It seemed Sidonius was just as determined and headstrong as his brother. But if I didn’t rest soon, I would collapse – and there was no guarantee as to what might happen while I was unconscious.

I took a breath and closed my eyes, so as not to witness his triumph. ‘Win me back the throne, General, and I will pledge my power to Ilthea’s aid. Now, and in the future.’

I opened my eyes, seeking his reaction. He was silent, considering.

‘Perhaps,’ he said at last, noncommittal, though the cautious way he held his shoulders hinted at a decision in my favour.

‘But I want you shadow-pledged to it before you rest,’ he added.