Читать книгу Warhost of Vastmark - Janny Wurts, Janny Wurts - Страница 12

Lysaer s’Ilessid set foot on the damp sands of Merior, still dissatisfied over the report sent back from the galley which had run down the fugitive vessel. Of an unknown number of enemy crewmen, two had been slain in the melee of boarding. The sole survivor brought back for questioning was himself a prisoner of the Shadow Master, notched in scars from recent cruel handling, and unconscious from fresh burns and smoke poisoning.

Duke Bransian’s crack captains had been too busy sparing the one life to mount a search of the waters for longboats.

Thwarted from gaining the informant he required to dog his enemy’s trail, Lysaer clenched his jaw to rein back a savage bout of temper. Since the strike force under his personal banner was land-bound to close off the peninsula, Alestron’s mercenaries had done the boarding, a setback he lacked sovereignty to reverse. His own officers had been trained on no uncertain terms to expect the vicious style of Arithon’s pirate forebears. Seldom, if ever, had the men they commanded surrendered their vessels with crewmen still alive to be captured.

A salt-laden gust parted Lysaer’s fair hair as he trained his stormy regard up the beachhead. The rain had stopped. Mid-afternoon light shafted through broken clouds. The puddles wore a leaden sheen, and a shimmer of dipped silver played over the drenched crowns of the palm groves. Nestled in gloom as though uninhabited, the whitewashed cottages of Merior greeted his landing with wooden plank doors and pegged shutters shut fast.

The harbour stretched grey and empty as the land, choppy waters peppered with vacant moorings. The local fishing fleet would return with the dusk, as on any ordinary day. Up the strand, a sullen, black streamer of smoke spiralled on the wind from the site of Arithon’s shipyard. No fugitives had sought to cross the cordon of mercenaries that blocked Scimlade Tip from the mainland; the single lugger found setting fish traps in the bay had offered no hostilities when flagged down for questioning.

The name of the Master of Shadow had drawn a blank reaction from the crew. Also from every man and woman in the trade port of Shaddorn to the south, that advance scouts had waylaid for inquiry.

‘I wonder how long he prepared for our coming?’ Lysaer mused as Diegan strode up behind him.

The Lord Commander’s best boots were soaked from the landing, his demeanour as bleak as the surrounding landscape above chain mail and black-trimmed surcoat. ‘You know we won’t find anything. The shipworks will be a gutted ruin.’

A thorough search was conducted anyway, a party of foot troops sent to poke through the steaming embers of collapsed sheds under Diegan’s direction. Lysaer waited to one side, his royal finery concealed beneath a seaman’s borrowed oilskins, while the breakers rolled and boomed in sullen rhythm against the headland and the wind riffled wrinkles in the puddles.

‘The withdrawal was well planned,’ Avenor’s Lord Commander confirmed at length. ‘No tools were abandoned. These buildings were emptied before they were fired. We can send officers house to house through Merior all you like, but I’d lay sand to diamonds that Arithon left nothing to clue us of his intentions.’

Lysaer kicked the charred fragment of a corner post amid the rubble that remained of the sail loft. Scarcely audible, he said, ‘He left the village.’

‘You think he’ll be back?’ Prepared to disagree, Diegan pushed up his helm to scrape his damp hair off his brow.

‘No.’ Lysaer spun in a flapping storm of oilcloth and stalked to the edge of the tidemark. ‘The fugitive ship which burned before our eyes was the easiest chance we had to track him. Now that option’s lost, he’ll have the whole ocean in which to take cover. We’re balked, but not crippled. The stamp of his design can never be mistaken for merchant shipping. Wherever the Shadow Master plans to make landfall, I’ll find the means to be waiting.’

At twilight, when the fishing luggers sailed homeward to find their cove patrolled by war galleys and their shores cluttered with encampments of mercenaries, knots of shouting men and a congregation of goodwives converged upon the beaten earth of the fish market. A groomed contingent of Avenor’s senior officers turned out and met them to assure their prince would answer their complaints. By the fluttered, ruddy light of pitch torches, on a dais constructed of fish barrels and planks, the Prince of the West awaited in a surcoat edged in braided bullion. In token of royal rank he wore only a gold circlet. Against all advice, he was not armed. His bodyguard remained with the longboats, and only Alestron’s fleet admiral and two officers attended at his right hand.

Lord Diegan stood at the edge of the crowd. Surrounded by a plainly clad cadre of men-at-arms, his strict orders were to observe without interference. The restraint left him uneasy since the crowd showed defiance. Grumbles from the fringes held distinct, unfriendly overtones concerning the presumption of outsiders.

Lysaer gave such talk small chance to blossom into strife. ‘We are gathered here to begin a celebration,’ he announced.

The background buzz of speculation choked off in stiff outrage. ‘Yer war galleys scarcely be welcomed here!’ cried one of the elders from the boardinghouse.

Other men called gruff agreement. Lysaer waited them out in elegant stillness while the piped cry of a killdeer sliced the soughing snap of the torch flames, and the air pressed rain-laden gusts to flap sullen folds in the standards of Alestron and Avenor that flanked his commanding stance upon the dais. ‘The cask for the occasion shall be provided from my stores.’

‘We had peace before ye set foot here!’ called a good-wife. ‘When our fish wagon to Shaddorn’s turned back by armed troops, I’d say that’s muckle poor cause for dancing!’

Again Lysaer waited for the shouts to die down. ‘Your village has just been spared from the designs of great evil, and the grasp of a man of such resource and cunning, none here could know the extent of his ill intentions. I speak of the one you call Arithon, known in the north as Teir’s‘Ffalenn and the Master of Shadow.’

This time when hubbub arose, Lysaer cut clearly through the clamour. ‘During his years among you, he has exploited your trust, lured blameless craftsmen into dishonest service, and spent stolen funds to outfit a fleet designed and intended for piracy. I’m here tonight to expose his bloody history, and to dispel without question every doubt to be raised against the criminal intent he sought to hide.’

The quiet at this grew profound. Muscular men in patched oilskins and their goodwives in their aprons spangled with cod scales packed into a solid and threatening body. Before the ranks of inimical faces, Lysaer resumed unperturbed. In clear, magisterial elegance, he presented his case, beginning with the wrongs done his family on his homeworld of Dascen Elur. There, the s’Ffalenn bent for sea raids had been documented by royal magistrates for seven generations. The toll of damaged lives was impressive. Stirred to forceful resolve, the fair-haired prince related his eyewitness account of the slaughter at Deshir Forest. Other transgressions at Jaelot and Alestron were confirmed by Duke Bransian’s officer. He ended with the broad-scale act of destruction which had torched the trade fleet at Minderl Bay.

The villagers remained unconvinced.

A few in the front ranks crossed their arms in disgust, unimpressed with foreign news that held little bearing upon the daily concerns of their fishing fleet.

‘Is it possible you think the man who sheltered here was not one and the same person?’ Lysaer asked. ‘Let me say why that fails to surprise me.’ He went on to describe the Shadow Master’s appearance and habits in a damning array of detail. He spoke of innocents diabolically corrupted, small children taught to cut the throats of the wounded lying helpless in their blood on the field. His description was dire and graphic enough to wring any parent to distress.

Before Lysaer’s forthright and painful self-honesty, Arithon, in retrospect, seemed shady as a night thief. Natural reticence felt like dishonest concealment, and leashed emotion, the mark of a cold, scheming mind.

‘This is a man whose kindness is drawn in sharp calculation, whose every word and act masks a hidden motive. Pity does not move him. His code is base deceit. The people he befriends are as game pieces, and if violent death suits the stripe of his design, not even babes are exempt.’

‘Now that’s a foul lie!’ objected the boardinghouse landlady. ‘The shipyard master we knew here had as much compassion for children as any man gifted with fatherhood. The young ones adored him. Jinesse there will say as much.’

Lysaer focused where the matron pointed, and picked out the figure in the dark shawl who shrank at the mention of her name: a woman on the fringes, faceless in the gloom except for the wheaten coil of hair pinned over her blurred, oval features.

‘Lady, come here,’ Lysaer commanded. He stepped down from the dais. His instinctive, lordly grace caused the villagers to part and give him way. At her evident reluctance, he waved to his officer to unsocket a torch and bring it forward. Trapped isolate amid a sudden, brilliant ring of light, the widow could do naught else but confront him.

Golden, majestic, the Prince of the West did not address her on the level of the crowd. He caught her bird-boned hand in a sure, warm grip, and as if she were wellborn and precious, drew her up the plank step to the dais. He gave her no chance for embarrassed recrimination. His gaze, blue as unflawed sky, stayed direct and fixed on her face. ‘I’m grieved indeed to see a man with no scruples delude an upright goodwife such as you.’

Jinesse heaved a tight breath, her fingers grown damp and starting to tremble. She searched the heart-stopping, beautiful male features beneath the circlet and cap of pale hair. She found no reassurance, no trace of the charlatan in the square, honest line of his jaw and the sculptured slope of his cheekbones. His unclouded eyes reflected back calm concern and unimpeachable sincerity.

‘Forgive me,’ said the prince in a gentleness very different than the mettlesome, biting irony of the Shadow Master. ‘I see I’ve struck hurtfully close to the mark. I never intended to grieve you.’

Jinesse pushed away the uneasy recollection of green eyes, heavy with shadows too impenetrably deep to yield their mystery. ‘Master Arithon showed only kindness to my twins. I cannot believe he’d cause them harm.’

‘Young children?’ Lysaer probed. ‘Lady, hear my warning, Arithon’s past is a history of misdirection. He may indeed have shown only his finest intentions in your presence. But where are your little ones now?’ Informed by the small jerk of the hand he still clasped, Lysaer returned a squeeze of commiseration. ‘The man has succeeded in luring your offspring from your side, I see. You were very right to say children love him. They are as clay in his hands. I can see I need not say more.’

Jinesse clenched her lip to stop a fierce quiver. She did not trust herself to speak.

‘It may not be too late,’ the prince reassured, his voice pitched as well for the villagers gathered beneath the dais. The people, all unwitting, had crowded closer to hang on each word as he spoke. ‘I have an army and Alestron’s fleet of war galleys. We are highly mobile, well supplied, and most able to mount swift pursuit. I only need know where the Master of Shadow has gone. Prompt action could restore your lost twins to your side.’

Jinesse recovered the courage to draw back. ‘What you offer is a war! That could as easily drown them in Ath’s oceans to share a grave in the deeps with their father.’

‘Perhaps,’ Lysaer said equably. ‘Would you rather Dharkaron Avenger should meet and judge their spirits first? If the Wheel’s turning took them in some machination of the Shadow Master’s, they could find their damnation as well.’

‘How dramatic,’ Jinesse said in a stiff-backed distaste that deplored his choice of public venue. ‘We’ve known Arithon as a fair-minded man for the better part of a year. On your word, in just one afternoon, we’re to accept the greater mercy of your judgment?’

Yet her composure crumbled just enough for Lysaer to glean a ruler’s insight: if the villagers of Merior had sheltered Arithon in ignorance, this one woman had been aware of his identity beforetime. An added depth of grief pinched her features as she challenged, ‘What of the crew who manned the Shearfast? Where was your vaunted pity when your galleys ran them down and let them burn?’

‘Your husband was aboard?’ Lysaer probed softly.

Jinesse jerked her fingers from his clasp. Her wide-eyed flash of resentment transformed to dismay as she spun and flounced off of the dais.

‘Go with her,’ Lysaer said in swift order to the officer at the base of the stair. ‘See her home safely and stay there until I can send someone to console her. There were survivors from that vessel. I don’t know how many, but her loved one could possibly be among them.’

Mollified by the kindness shown to one of their own, the villagers of Merior gave way to a grudging, gruff patience as Lysaer concluded his speech. ‘I’ve scarcely touched on the danger this conniving pirate presents. If you never saw him work shadows or sorcery, you will be shown that his gifts are no tale without substance. Among you stand my officers, who saw the sunlight over Minderl Bay become strangled into darkness. They will stay and hear your questions. Lord Diegan will tell of the massacre he survived on the banks of Tal Quorin in Deshir. We have a man from Jaelot and another from Alestron, who witnessed the felonies there. But lest what they say turn your hearts to rank fear, I would have you understand you’re not alone.’

Lysaer raised his arms. His full, embroidered sleeves fell away from his wrists as he stretched his hands wide and summoned the powers of his birth gift. A flood of golden light washed the fish market. It rinsed through the flames in the torches, and built, blinding, dazzling, until the eye could not separate the figure of the prince from the overwhelming, miraculous glare.

Lysaer’s voice rolled over the dismayed gasps of the awestruck fisherfolk at his feet. ‘My gift of light is a full match for the Master of Shadow! Be assured I shall not rest until this land is safe, and his evil designs are eradicated.’

From the boardinghouse landlady, who called with a basket of scones, Jinesse learned how opinion had turned once Prince Lysaer had left the villagers to enjoy his hospitality. The beer and the wine had flowed freely, while talk loosened. The old gossip concerning the Black Drake and the widow’s past voyage on Talliarthe were resurrected and bandied about with fresh fervour. Most telling of all was Arithon’s reticence. The fact he had no confidant, that he never shared the least clue to his intentions became the most damning fact against him. Paired with first-hand accounts of his atrocities in the north, such self-possessed privacy in hindsight became the quiet of a secret, scheming mind.

By roundabout means, the landlady reached the news she had been appointed to deliver. ‘When the galley’s crew boarded and took Shearfast, they insist only two of Arithon’s sailors met them. Those refused quarter and fought to the death, but not to save their command. They had already fired the new hull to scuttle her. Despite the flames, the duke’s officers searched the hold. They found a bound man held captive below decks. He was cut loose while unconscious, and is now in the care of Prince Lysaer’s personal healer.’

Jinesse looked up from the skirt she had been mending, her needle poised at an agonized angle between stitches she had jerked much too tight. The name of Tharrick hung unspoken as she said, ‘But Arithon kept no one prisoner.’

The boardinghouse landlady sniffed and drizzled honey over one of the pastries. ‘I said so. The Prince of the West showed no opinion on the matter, but looked me through as though I were a child in sad want of wisdom.’

Unbleached homespun crumpled under Jinesse’s knuckles. She, too, kept her thoughts to herself. For the ruinous delay which Tharrick’s retribution had inflicted on the works at the shipyard, it seemed entirely plausible that Shearfast’s doomed crew might have seized their belated revenge. To ask the next question required all the courage she possessed. ‘What did you say to his Grace?’

‘Why, nothing.’ The landlady flicked crumbs from her blouse and gave a shrug as dour as a fisherman’s. ‘Let these outsiders untangle their own misadventures. We’re not traderfolk, to hang our daily lives upon rumours. The mackerel won’t swim to the net any better should we buy and sell talk like informants. If Arithon’s evil, that’s his own affair. He tried no foul acts in our village.’ But her forceful, brusque note as she ended spoke of doubts irrevocably seeded.

The landlady folded the linen she had used to pack the scones. ‘With only two bodies found to be counted, Prince Lysaer wished you to hear there may have been other survivors.’ As she arose and smoothed her skirts over her ample thighs, she added on afterthought, ‘His Grace seems anxious to know the number of Shearfast’s crew. They were Arithon’s people, I told him.’

Miserable and mute, Jinesse watched the other woman sweep past the pantry to let herself out. Paused at the threshold on departure, her full-lipped, cattiest smile as much for Lysaer’s young officer, listening at his post outside the doorway, the landlady concluded her last line. ‘I said, why ever should we care?’

The following morning, the Prince of the West presented himself at the widow’s cottage for a visit. By then, he had made enough inquiries to know that her husband had drowned a year past in a fishing accident. Whatever her attachment to the men who had crewed the lost Shearfast, he came prepared to treat her grief with compassion. As his escort, he brought a pair of neatly appointed guardsmen to relieve the one on duty in the yard.

The elegance and manners of old blood royalty should not have upset her poise, Jinesse thought. Arithon’s disconcerting, satirical directness had never made her feel embarrassed for unrefined origins, nor had his bearing afflicted her with apologetic confusion over whether or not she should curtsy.

Resplendent in glossy silk, and a chain of gold and matched sapphires, Lysaer stepped across the waxed boards of her parlour and caught her chapped fingers away from her habitual urge to fidget. ‘Come sit,’ he insisted.

He spun her gently to a chair. The shutters on the window were latched against the morning, the gloom pricked by leaked light through the cracks where the wood was poorly fitted. Clad in dark skirts and a laced bodice of brown twill, Jinesse looked more faded than usual. Her cheeks were drawn and her eyes as tintless as the palest aquamarine.

Memories of another prince in rough linen who had set her just as deftly on a woodpile dogged her thoughts as she sought once again to plumb royal character through a face. Where Arithon had shown her discomfiting reticence and a perception forthright enough to wound, Prince Lysaer seemed candid and direct as clear sunlight. His dress was rich without being ostentatious. The breathtaking effect of overpowering male beauty he countered in personal warmth that lent an effect no less awesome.

The study he flicked over the room’s rude interior held detached interest, until the fired glitter of the fine, cut glass bowl on her dish shelves snagged his interest. His surprise was genuine as he crossed the room on a stride. The sculpted shape of his hand bore an uncanny resemblance to Arithon’s as he lifted the Falgaire crystal from the shelf.

‘Where did you get this?’

Jinesse’s answer was cold. ‘I received it as a present from a friend.’

Lysaer recrossed the floor, set the bowl on the chest by the window, then unlatched and flung wide the shutters. Sunlight streamed in, and the salt scent of breakers, cut by the shrill calls of the gulls. The facets of the crystal responded in an incandescent flare of captured brilliance.

‘A lovely gift, Falgaire glasswork,’ Lysaer said. He found the battered stool the twins liked for whittling and perched. ‘I shan’t hide the truth. I know you accepted this bowl from Arithon s’Ffalenn, though no doubt you would have declined his generosity had you known where he first obtained it.’

When Jinesse did not favour him with more than her stony-eyed quiet, Lysaer sighed and fingered the faceted rim. Broken light caught in the jewels of his rings, an icy point of cold at each knuckle. ‘I know this piece well. It was granted to me during a state visit by the Mayor of Falgaire, then stolen in a raid by barbarians allied with the Shadow Master. You would do well to take heed. The man is a threat to every city in Athera, your own children even now at his mercy. You knew him well enough to receive his favour. Perhaps you also heard the name of the port that will come to shelter him next. Were this campaign in sole charge of Duke Bransian of Alestron, or my Commander-at-Arms, Lord Diegan, either one would use means to force the information from you. I shall give no such orders. Your collusion is a tragedy and I pity your twins. But I shall not try abuse to gain my ends. Your Master of Shadow held no such scruple with the man he took prisoner, who claims to have fired his shipyard.’

‘Arithon kept no one captive,’ Jinesse insisted.

Lysaer did not miss how her gaze stayed averted from the bowl. That’s a falsehood most easily disproved. The wretch we saved off the Shearfast was left bound there to burn. Once we got him cleaned up, he was recognized as a former captain of Duke Bransian’s, who had reason to bear malice toward your Master.’

‘Why not go back and question him?’ Jinesse said, a struck spark of iron in her tone.

Lysaer met her with patience. ‘When the victim regained his wits, he talked well enough. He said he had torched the s’Ffalenn ship works, and for that, suffered rough interrogation. The scars on his body attest his honesty.’

‘Arithon never beat him,’ Jinesse said.

‘No.’ Lysaer regarded her in level, brutal truth. ‘Alestron’s officers did that for what looks like mishandled justice. What Captain Tharrick received from your Shadow Master were burns, inflicted with a knife blade heated red-hot, then assault with a bludgeon that left knots in his sides from broken ribs. Not pretty,’ he finished. ‘The additional blistering he suffered from the flames before he was rescued from Shearfast cause him pain aboard an anchored galley. My healer says he needs stillness and rest. Therefore, I came to beg your charity. Let Tharrick come to your cottage to recover from his injuries. My servant will be sent to administer remedies as needed. After seeing this man’s condition first-hand, you may reconsider your opinion on the criminal your silence comes to shelter.’

Too upright to feign horror, since every mark on Tharrick’s body was already infinitely well known to her, Jinesse sat braced in her chair. The depths of her feelings stayed masked behind acid and painful politeness. ‘Bring your injured man here. I refuse none in need. But lest you hope falsely, my kindness to an outsider will lend no more credence to your plotting.’

‘Very well.’ Lysaer stood in a frosty sparkle of disturbed gemstones. ‘I see I’ve upset you. That was necessary. My concern for the dangers you refuse to acknowledge is no light matter for dismissal. Two of my guards will stand watch at your door. Having suffered the tragic consequences of s’Ffalenn cunning all my life, I realize the allure he can foster. Knowing, I stake no less than my personal assurance of your safety.’

‘I wish no protection,’ Jinesse said, obstinate.

Lysaer inclined his head in regal sympathy. ‘I can hope you’ll reconsider, if only to help your lost children. Have no fear. The ones in the village who disagree with your stand shall not be permitted to badger you. Should you wish to confide in me, you have only to send one of the men-at-arms. Rest assured, mistress, I will come.’

On the instant the Prince of the West had departed, Jinesse took the offending bowl of Falgaire crystal and shut it away in a clothes trunk. She banged the catch down and sat on the lid, then buried her face in her shaking hands and wept in painful relief.

Tharrick had survived the wreck of Shearfast.

By a stunning twist of fate, a misapprehension, and the sort of tangled handling Arithon left like moiled waters in his wake, Lysaer s’Ilessid meant to send him here, ostensibly to undermine her prior loyalties.

The sob in her throat twisted to a stifled gasp of irony. In fact, Tharrick under her roof would but tighten the villagers’ resistance. They might have betrayed the exiled captain’s collaboration with Arithon while he was aboard Lysaer’s galley, but under her roof, he became as one of their own. Whatever ill intent they came to believe of the Shadow Master, Tharrick’s interests would suffer no immediate betrayal.

The procession to deliver the invalid to her cottage arrived in the early afternoon. Jinesse had the bed in her back room made up in clean linens to receive him. A brisk hour in the kitchen over pans of hot water and recipes for herbal poultices convinced the prince’s physician that she was well versed in the treatment of burns. An indolent man and a scholar by nature, he was content to leave the convalescent in her care. Her dislike of outsiders left him distinctly unwelcome. He would check in, he assured, every few days to see that Tharrick’s weals closed cleanly.

The litter bearers left, cracking crude jokes and laughing through the winter twilight that mantled pearly mist over the beachhead of Merior. As Jinesse closed the shutters against the sea damp and set about the chore of lighting candles, Tharrick stirred from the heavy sleep of drugged possets. He opened his eyes to the familiar sight of a pale-haired wraith of a woman with a profile like clear wax, underlit by the flutter of a tallow dip.

She saw him come aware. A still, pretty smile raised the corners of her mouth as she reached out to smooth the singed ends of his hair over his bandaged forehead. ‘Don’t speak.’ Her look warned him silent as she whispered, ‘Lysaer’s men-at-arms wait without.’

Tharrick closed his eyes, unsure how he had come to be returned to the widow’s care, but grateful for the comfort of her presence. That her cottage was kept under watch was not hard to believe. Lysaer and his officers had been demanding in their efforts at interrogation. Passion and urgency had driven them to dig for any clue to Arithon’s intentions and location. Tharrick had withstood their pity and their blandishments. He had sweated in his sheets through their threats, and repeated himself unto tedium. His ignorance was no lie. Only the Shearfast’s dead captain had known their intended port of call.

Now, restored to friendly surroundings and the outward illusion of safety, necessity came hard to maintain the act that he and the widow were strangers.

Late in the night, when the thud of the breakers thrashed the spit at flood tide, Jinesse came to his darkened bedside. She brought water as she had when he was Arithon’s charge, and tucked in the bedding tossed awry in his suffering.

‘Do you believe the Prince of the West?’ she demanded point-blank at a whisper. Fresh in her mind lay the morning’s trip to the market, where a neighbour had refused to sell her eggs. Another wife pointed and insisted that she was a creature enspelled, drawn into wickedness to abet the Master of Shadow.

Tharrick studied the edge of her profile, printed in moonlight against the outlines of gauzy, high-flying clouds. ‘That Prince Arithon is evil? Or that he’s guilty of criminal acts in the north?’

The crash of the surf masked their voices. Jinesse bent her neck, her features blocked in sudden dimness. ‘You feel there’s distinction?’

Tharrick stirred from discomfort that had little to do with blistered skin. ‘The accusations fit too well to deny. Don’t forget, I saw what he caused at Alestron.’

‘You’ll betray him,’ Jinesse said.

‘I ought to.’ Tharrick shoved aside the corner of the coverlet and reached out a wrapped hand to cup her knee. ‘I won’t.’ Aware of her porcelain fairness turned toward him, he swallowed. ‘Corrupt, evil, sorcerer he may be, yet I am not Daelion Fatemaster to dare stand in judgment for his acts. By my lights, he’s the only master I have served who treated me as a man. For that, I’d take Dharkaron’s Spear in damnation before I’d turn coat and pass blithe beneath the Wheel to Athlieria. If blind service to Prince Lysaer’s justice is moral right, I prefer to keep my own honour.’

‘What will you do, then?’ Jinesse demanded. ‘The peninsula’s cut off by Avenor’s crack troops. The duke’s war galleys blockade the harbour. Lysaer’s guardsmen watch every move I make. Sooner or later, demands shall be made of me. The villagers don’t support my silence.’ She finished in a bitterness on the trembling edge of breakdown. ‘I cannot abandon my children.’

The tips of Tharrick’s fingers flexed against her knee. ‘I gave you my promise, mistress.’ In short, snatched whispers, while the moonlight fled and flooded and limned the widow’s form with silvered light, he told of the sailhands who rowed from the Shearfast for the shore.

‘They were to seek sanctuary in the hostel of Ath’s Brotherhood. It’s my plan to go there and rejoin them, and take whatever facts I know concerning Lysaer’s campaign plans. I’m telling you this, mistress, because I hold earnest hope that you will decide to come with me.’

‘I can’t.’ The thread that held Jinesse to composure came unravelled, and her slender body spasmed to the jerk of stifled sobs. ‘Fiark and Feylind are endangered. Lysaer insists he’s concerned for them. But he cannot be everywhere and atrocities happen where armies march. I fear what might come if my twins were caught in the path of the bloodshed intended to bring down the Master of Shadow.’

The brimming, liquid tracks of her tears and the anguish in her voice caused Tharrick to shove upright despite his pain. He gathered her against his warm shoulder. ‘I may have chosen to throw my lot in with Arithon. That doesn’t mean I support the ruin of small children. Come away with me. I’ll help see your young ones restored to you.’

‘So he did tell you where he was bound,’ Jinesse murmured. Her sigh of relief unreeled through a throat tight with weeping.

‘No,’ Tharrick whispered against the crown of her head. ‘But as Ath is my witness, he must have told you.’