Defiant Peaks (The Hadrumal Crisis) Page 2

  Corrain had been the only man to offer Halferan any hope of salvation from the corsairs. Even if his scheming had seen the manor itself devastated while the wider barony had been saved.

  A belated thought struck Zurenne. Should she have sent Madam Jilseth some festival gift or greeting? What of Master Tornauld and Madam Merenel? Did mages exchange such courtesies at the solstice and equinox seasons? It was strange to think of the mages who had slaughtered the corsairs’ would-be wizardly tyrant and helped to rebuild Halferan celebrating like ordinary folk.

  As Zurenne’s hand strayed to the triangular silver pendant which she wore threaded on a black ribbon around her neck, she noticed the gazes of the first tenants to approach the dais fix on the necklace.

  The device itself held no significance, beyond making up Zurenne’s personal seal formed from the three runes drawn by ancient custom at her birth, arrayed around the sun rune to show she had been born in the daytime. What mattered to Halferan’s folk was knowing that the Archmage had given their widowed lady that pendant imbued with his very own magic. So she could call for his aid, if the corsairs who had murdered so many of their kith and kin ever reappeared.

  Zurenne let her hand fall to her side. Saedrin send that she would never have to do such a thing, that Lysha would never need to use the ensorcelled pendant wrought from her own birth runes. Saedrin grant them all that blessing, and Dastennin god of storms and Raeponin god of justice and any other deity who might be listening. If there was any fair dealing from the gods, as this new year began, Halferan was done with magic.

  The crowd was swelling in the manor’s great hall. Kusint opened the brass-bound coffer to receive the baronial dues. Master Rauffe trimmed his quill’s nib with a penknife and uncapped his inkwell, ready to inscribe names and sums in his ledger.

  Both men looked expectantly at Zurenne. She drew a steadying breath, grateful for the elevation of the dais’s three steps. Now she could look even the tallest men in the eye despite her own modest stature. She spared a moment to thank Halcarion, goddess of maidens, that Ilysh took after her father in the promise of elegant height when she was full grown as well as in her strong features.

  The murmur of conversation died away as the tenantry realised that she awaited their attention.

  ‘Fair festival to you all.’

  Zurenne had barely spoken two words before exultant cheers rang up to the restored roof, echoing among the bare rafters unsoftened by the generations of hanging banners that had once proclaimed Lysha and Neeny’s heritage. Like the ancient baronial chair, those standards had burned to ashes, never to be salvaged.

  As the echoes died away, Zurenne continued. ‘We have no need to hold any high assize—’

  Once again, noisy approval drowned out her words, even though everyone knew that Kusint’s guardsmen had no violent malefactors locked up in the barrack-hall’s cellar.

  The demesne folk and the tenantry had ensured that their maiden lady need not insist on her duty to sit in judgement even over murderers and rapists, compelled to condemn such evildoers to the gallows and the gibbet by the high road. They knew full well that Ilysh had only seen her thirteenth summer solstice this past year, however determined she might be to assume all of her dead father’s responsibilities.

  So, as Zurenne had learned, overhearing the maidservants gossiping, Halferan’s villagers and yeomen had administered their own swift and rough justice whenever some villain had been discovered selfishly seeking to profit at others’ expense while everyone else strove to rebuild their homes and to re-establish their flocks and herds.

  She stole a glance at Kusint. He gazed blandly over the heads of the joyful throng, as if he’d never had to intervene to make sure that such punishment stopped just short of murder, when an egg-seller whose wares all proved addled had been pelted with filth and stones or a day-labourer caught sleeping under a hedge rather than work for his bread and ale had been stripped naked and beaten bloody. And Zurenne had no doubt those incidents were only the whiskers on that rat’s nose.

  Of course several neighbouring barons had seized on such incidents, claiming that Halferan was slipping into anarchy. Baron Karpis in particular didn’t cease to prophesy disaster. How could any barony hope to prosper without the guiding hand of a nobleman reared to manage such responsibilities?

  Upstairs in her sitting room, Zurenne had a box of letters from concerned lords’ gracious wives offering their support when she came to her senses and sought to set Ilysh’s scandalous marriage aside in favour of a more suitable alliance.

  Such letters would go unanswered and if any noble lord thought to take advantage of Corrain’s absence by arriving unannounced, intent on browbeating her, Zurenne would remind them how Baron Karpis and his men had been so thoroughly humiliated when the magewoman Madam Jilseth had rusted their swords and armour to dust in the blink of an eye with her wizardry. Those lords weren’t to know that Halferan had forsworn magic’s aid henceforth.

  As a smile of recollection curved her rose-petal lips, Zurenne realised that letting her thoughts wander had allowed the tenantry’s cheers to subside into idle chatter and jovial exchanges of festival greetings. She must command this crowd’s attention and respect, for her daughter’s sake.

  ‘Today—’ Zurenne cleared her throat and repeated herself more loudly. ‘Today we ask you to pay your fealty in coin, to enable your lord and baron to safeguard your interests through the year to come as his—as his oath to you all demands.’

  With the cheers this time more respectfully muted, she noted Ilysh shifting on her seat.

  Had her daughter caught that stumble in her words? Zurenne had so nearly repeated the form of words which her dead husband had always used, which his stewards had used on his behalf when he had been away attending the festival parliament.

  Her lost beloved had laid claim to this seasonal levy both as his birthright and by virtue of his oath to Saedrin. He had been Baron Halferan by blood just as his father had been and countless grandsires before that.

  Now it was Lady Ilysh who commanded these people’s loyalty and their love. Zurenne’s heart warmed to see the affection in their faces as they stepped up onto the dais, eagerly laying down their coin as tangible proof of their devotion.

  Corrain would never be more than an erstwhile guard captain to these people, his sham marriage merely one more service he was rendering to the barony to keep their true lady safe.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Silver Boar Inn, Duryea, Caladhria

  Winter Solstice Festival, 3rd Day

  In the 10th Year of Tadriol the Provident of Tormalin

  ‘YOUR CLOAK, MY lord Halferan.’ A lackey hurried forward to offer him the heavy grey wool, scarlet-dyed fur at the collar thick to foil the cold. Winter was appreciably more bitter here, so much further north with almost the whole length of Caladhria between him and home.

  ‘Thank you.’ Corrain tossed the man a silver penny before taking the cloak to sling it around his own shoulders. Though he didn’t imagine a Duryea inn’s doorkeeper would try to strangle him, lifelong habit wouldn’t see him allowing another man’s hands so close to his throat.

  ‘Will you be sharing some festival cheer with your friends, my lord?’ The porter smiled, genial and guileless.

  ‘No.’ Corrain didn’t offer the man any more than that as he emerged into the bright sunlight. He shivered unexpectedly.

  ‘Did some Eldritch Kin walk over your shadow?’ A dark-haired youth in Halferan livery strolled over from the brazier where he’d been enjoying the warmth of the glowing charcoal. His breath smoked with the warmth of the sausage he was eating, wedged into a sliced heel of bread with a generous spoonful of fried onions.

  Reven might be young but Corrain found it hard to credit he still believed in the black-eyed, blue-skinned half-men of chimney-corner tales. In the echo of their footsteps crossing whatever ground corresponded to this marketplace in the unknown Otherworld.

  Corrain was concerned with more tangi
ble mischief-makers than Eldritch Kin defying Saedrin’s authority and slipping into this world for their own nefarious purposes as the Keyholder’s door stood open on this shortest quarter day of the year.

  ‘Find out who’s paying that doorman for whatever he might overhear,’ he ordered without preamble, fastening his cloak. ‘Whose maids and lackeys will be clearing up after the parliament’s debates today? Who will be guarding the merchants’ hall’s doors?’

  Corrain had different battles to fight now that the cursed corsairs were all dead and drowned, now that he was finally free from the uneasy and unequal alliances he had made with Hadrumal’s wizards. Now he needed the information which he had always supplied to his own true Lord Halferan, to be used amid the rivalries and squabbles of Caladhria’s nobles, especially as he pursued his current conspiracy with the barons of Saldiray, Taine and Myrist.

  Reven chewed and swallowed quickly. ‘Lord Pertynd supplies the servants to tidy the merchants’ exchange hall every day. Erbale will watch the door until today’s debate concludes and Vildare will have the night’s duty after that.’

  Corrain nodded. ‘Find out the name of Lord Erbale’s guard captain. Find out where his troopers are drinking this evening. Go along in a plain jerkin with a fat purse and a harmless face. See what gossip they might have picked up from the barons going to and fro through the day.’

  ‘Aye—my lord.’ Reven ducked his head to cover his instant of hesitation.

  Corrain hid a smile. The lad’s first instinct was still to call him captain. That was no great concern, as long as there was no one around to overhear them. What was important was Reven learning all the skills that a good guard sergeant needed to serve his lord when the quarterly parliament was in session.

  He considered suggesting that the lad seek out Lord Pertynd’s maidservants. To see if Reven could inveigle his way between some adventurous girl’s sheets, the better to search her bedchamber for whatever notes she had gathered up, passed between the barons’ tables during their debates and carelessly discarded. Corrain’s own reputation as a trooper with a keen appetite for festival dalliance hadn’t only stemmed from his willingness to oblige any woman whose wandering eye caught his own.

  He thought better of it, and not only because he didn’t think that Reven had ever so much as untied a giggling girl’s garters. The barony would be better served if every Halferan guardsman kept his breeches laced. He jerked his head backwards towards the Silver Boar’s grandly carved and painted entrance.

  ‘Has anyone come sniffing around the laundry baskets at the inn, looking for stained sheets? Asking the chambermaids if I’ve been sleeping alone?’

  Corrain hoped there had. Anyone looking to undermine the marriage making him Baron Halferan by catching him in adultery was doomed to disappointment and the sooner that word spread, the better.

  He had married his dead lord’s daughter to keep her and her mother and sister out of any would-be guardian’s grasp. He would no more give Halferan’s enemies cause to challenge his right to protect them than he would humiliate the child by tupping some tawdry whore. Until he found a husband worthy of Ilysh, he would stay as celibate as she was virgin.

  Besides, these days he found that no trial, though his drinking companions of old would find that hard to believe. Plenty of troopers sworn to other lords could tell lurid tales of sharing their festival liberty in the same gambling dens and brothels as the new Baron Halferan.

  ‘Well?’ he prompted Reven.

  ‘No, my lord.’

  Corrain noted the swift blush rising from the boy’s collar. ‘Then what have they been asking?’

  He hadn’t served in Halferan’s guard for more than twenty years without learning to recognise a junior trooper with something to hide.

  Reven’s cheeks were burning as furiously as the sausage vendor’s brazier. ‘They say, my lord—’ he couldn’t bring himself to look at Corrain ‘—that you’re no longer fit to share any woman’s bed.’

  ‘Why not?’ Corrain was honestly puzzled.

  ‘They say, my lord, that the Archipelagans—’ Reven forced the words out in a rush ‘—that the Archipelagans geld their slaves.’

  Corrain’s first instinct was to laugh. He curbed it. ‘They’re saying that I’ve left my stones on some Aldabreshin beach?’

  Reven nodded. ‘Everyone knows that the warlords geld the house slaves who watch their wives.’

  Corrain shook his head. ‘The corsairs would gain nothing by cutting a galley’s rowers. They’d lose half of them to blood loss or wound rot or just the shock of it.’

  He could feel his groin tightening just at the revolting thought.

  ‘So try thinking with your brain not your shrivelling cock, Sergeant,’ he said curtly. ‘What does anyone have to gain by spreading this new rumour about me?’

  Reven hesitated. ‘To make you a figure of fun?’

  ‘That’s doubtless part of it,’ Corrain agreed, ‘but what does it mean for Halferan? What’s to become of the barony if there’s no chance of me begetting an heir? That’s what they want people asking themselves,’ he concluded grimly.

  ‘My lord.’ Reven’s blush had been fading. Now he coloured more luridly than before, doubtless at the thought of Corrain sharing Lady Ilysh’s bed.

  Corrain clapped a reassuring hand on the lad’s shoulder. ‘Well, if whoever’s behind this rumour has the stones to challenge my right to Halferan on these grounds, I can just drop my breeches and show all the lords of the parliament that I’ve still got both my berries attached to my twig.’

  That won him a choked laugh from Reven.

  ‘Meantime, you can drop a few tantalizing hints when you’re drinking with Lord Erbale’s men this evening,’ Corrain said thoughtfully. ‘Just make sure you take their coin before you disappoint them with your certain knowledge of my intact manhood, my lonely bed notwithstanding, and my unshakeable devotion to Lady Ilysh.’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’ Reven ducked his head. ‘Would you like to see what I have bought her for a festival fairing?’

  ‘By all means.’ Corrain eyed the lad thoughtfully. Was he just trying to change the subject?

  ‘Look at this.’ Reven took a rag-wrapped lump from his pocket. Carefully unfolding the cloth, he revealed an ordinary pebble with one smoothly polished face.

  ‘See?’ Reven turned the shining stone so that Corrain could see it was patterned like a feather fern.

  No, it was a feather fern, or at least, that’s what the hucksters who sold such stones insisted. Somehow in aeons past, the plant had been trapped in mud which had gradually turned to rock. Any wizard would swear to it, the peddlers assured their customers.

  ‘Do you think she’ll like it?’ Reven asked, suddenly uncertain.

  Corrain was tempted to lie. He’d brought Reven on this trip for a good many reasons. Newly installed as sergeant, the lad needed to establish his authority over the troop without Kusint always at hand to prompt the men to toe Reven’s line. Added to that, Corrain wanted Kusint watching over the manor, in case someone like Baron Karpis was fool enough to try taking advantage of Zurenne while she and her children were left alone.

  That wasn’t all. Over this past half-season, Corrain and Zurenne had agreed that Reven’s obvious devotion to Ilysh looked far too likely to slip into infatuation. One thoughtless midwinter kiss amid the license of the festival could prompt no end of complications.

  ‘I think she’ll like it well enough.’ He kept his approval muted. ‘Now, once you’re done drinking, you’re welcome to find some girl to share your pillow for the night. The cleanest whorehouses are by the Peorle Gate. Best to be sure you don’t take any unwelcome gifts back to some Halferan sweetheart.’

  ‘I don’t—’ Reven thrust his barely whiskered chin forward. ‘It’s my duty to serve you, my lord.’

  ‘As you wish.’ Well, he could hardly order the boy to go out and flip a lightskirt’s frills.

  Noon’s five chimes sounded out across the town, every ti
mepiece attuned to the great bell in the merchants’ exchange tower. Corrain reminded himself of the shorter days at this season so much further north than home. The barons would be summoned to their next debate by the sixth chime of the ten dividing the daylight. He had scant time to waste if he was to carry through his avowed intent to mark the turning of the year.

  ‘Come with me.’ He headed across the marketplace.

  Reven’s stride nearly matched his own; For-Winter might have just passed but the lad had grown like a weed flourishing in Aft-Spring.

  A black-gowned dancer trailing white ribbons from her hands wheeled into their path. As she pirouetted around them, drawing fleeting, silken designs in the sunlight, her smile invited them to spare some small coin in return for her festival entertainment.

  Perhaps she had innocently noted Reven’s pewter and maroon livery matching Corrain’s cloak, marking them as noble and escort, one of them bound to carry a full purse.

  Perhaps her calculating accomplice was coming up behind them. A slim knife could cut through a belt or even into a pocket to steal a purse unnoticed, especially if the girl were to stumble on these slick cobbles in her flimsy dancing slippers. Either the nobleman or his loyal trooper would surely dash gallantly forward to save the dark-haired beauty from a painful fall.

  Perhaps mingling with barons and their plotting was making him too suspicious. All the same, Corrain twitched his cloak back to leave his sword hilt unencumbered.

  ‘Fair festival.’ He smiled at the dancer. ‘Reven, a few coppers for the fair maiden.’

  As the boy obliged, the girl plucked the coins from the air amid a deft spiral of silk. The glint of tossed wealth prompted other entertainers to drift in their direction.

  ‘This way.’ Corrain disappointed them by cutting a straight route across the cobbles towards a narrow alley.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Reven made sure that his own cloak wouldn’t foil his blade if he needed to use it.

  ‘To fulfil an oath.’ Corrain felt for the new dagger sheathed on the opposite hip to his sword belt. He’d spent the last chime of the night before dawn honing the expensive steel with his whetstone. It would be sharp enough.