The traitor, p.14
The Traitor, page 14
I slumped in the saddle, the storm in my head subsiding into a bitter weariness. “I know,” I muttered. “Still, I’ll ask you to keep this one. For now, at least.”
“I will. But—” she wagged a finger at me “—no more talk of sending me away.”
I smiled, knowing I should feel guilty, but didn’t. To face what lay ahead I would need all my friends. The guilt came later, and the weight of it still brings me low so many years on.
We met Wilhum and the Mounted Company half a day’s ride from Athiltor. He greeted me cheerily enough, but there was a guarded aspect to his eyes that put me on edge. Guile was never one of Wilhum’s gifts and I never experienced the slightest difficulty in gauging truth or falsehood in his words.
“Patrol or something more serious?” I asked, nodding to the column of riders at his back, all girded for war.
“It appears your old comrades are determined upon a resurgence.” He forced himself to meet my eye as he spoke, one of the most obvious tells on a liar’s face. “Every day since you left, churls have been turning up with petitions. A few walked all the way from the Shavine Forest to bring word of outlaws. Much pillaging has been done, murder too.”
“Duchess Lorine is more than capable of dealing with it,” I said, keeping careful watch on his features.
Wilhum shook his head. “Our Lady wants the commons to know that the Covenant is their protector. We’ll ride around conspicuously for a few days, lay an ambush or two.”
I was certain that, whatever his true mission, it had nothing to do with outlaws. These days, outlawry in the Shavine duchy fell under the sway of Shilva Sahken, and Tiler had assured me she and Lorine had a mutually beneficial arrangement when it came to keeping the forest clean of miscreants. Wherever he was going, it wasn’t to the Shavine Forest. I also knew that the entire Mounted Company would not ride forth unless under Evadine’s express order. If Wilhum wouldn’t tell me his purpose, she would.
“Well, happy hunting,” I said, tugging Blackfoot’s reins. “Be sure to hand over any captives to the duchess. She won’t take kindly to arbitrary hangings in her domain.”
“Swain’s finally turned up, by the way,” Wilhum said as I started forward. Glancing back, I saw his face set in a forbidding grimace. “Unfortunately, he has a very good excuse for his tardiness.”
Arriving in Athiltor, I found Swain was busy mustering the Covenant Host upon the broad expanse of cobbles leading to the cathedral steps. One glance at the ranks sufficed to tell the tale: recently stitched cuts, dented breastplates, an eyepatch or two. I didn’t have Ayin’s facility for numbers, but my soldier’s eye gauged the full strength of the host at perhaps three-quarters of what it had been.
“I assume the Princess Regent wasn’t content for you to simply march out from Couravel,” I observed, dismounting from Blackfoot. I searched the ranks for faces I knew, letting out a relieved sigh at the sight of Ofihla sternly rebuking a halberdier for a loose belt buckle. She seemed hale as ever but sported a fading bruise on her jaw and a new scar across her nose.
“Orthodox rioters,” Swain said. “At least that was the claim. When Trooper Eamond arrived with the Lady’s summons, we mustered that very day. It seems the princess has spies either in our camp or close to it. By the time we set off, every street surrounding the barracks was blocked with a barricade. We had no option but to fight our way out of the city, harried at every turn. Archers on the rooftops, orthodox-ites darting out from alleyways to cut throats. They were a surprisingly disciplined lot for rioters, I must say.”
“Captives?” I asked.
“We only took a few, and they weren’t talking. We caught an archer I recognised as a kingsman, but he claimed he was acting only in the name of the True Covenant. I cut the fingers from his right hand and let him go.”
“Getting soft, Captain?”
Swain shrugged. “Never felt right to execute a soldier for merely following orders.”
“How long did it take to fight your way clear?”
“Two days, all told. And it didn’t end when we cleared the city walls. We were ambushed and obstructed near enough every day on the road. Also, many of the bridges betwixt Couravel and Athiltor had suspiciously caught fire and burned down to the stumps.” Swain’s features took on a dark cast, self-reproach writ large in his eyes. “And so, we were not here to assist in the Lady’s greatest triumph.”
“There’ll be other triumphs, I’m sure.” I inclined my head at the neat rows of soldiers. “What’s this in aid of?”
“The Lady has an address to make. Some kind of edict, she said.” He gave me a sidelong glance. “She told me of your mission to the north. Any luck?”
“Lord Shelvane can be bought. Duke Lohrent cannot, nor is he sympathetic. I think his son might be in love with Trooper Ayin, though. So that’s something.”
“War on two fronts, then.” Swain grimaced. “Not a pleasant prospect, my lord.”
“No, my lord. It isn’t.”
We shared a muted grin at the absurdity of addressing each other with titles bestowed by a dynasty with which we were now tacitly at war.
“Stand to!” Ofihla’s familiar bark echoed across the plaza. “All will pay heed to the Anointed Lady!”
Evadine appeared at the top of the cathedral steps in full armour, black enamelled plate still contriving to gleam despite a mostly overcast sky. Spots of rain began to fall as she started to speak, an ill-omened beginning to what I recognise now as the dawn of the whole bloody mess that ensued. Then, however, I stood and listened in expectation that the woman I loved was about to stir her audience to yet greater heights of adulation.
“I see before me soldiers of the Covenant Resurgent,” she stated, voice strident with unconcealed anger as it echoed across the Covenant Host and the thickening crowd of crusaders and townsfolk at the fringes of the plaza. “And I see their wounds. I see the absence of those I called friend and comrade, brave souls who fought at my side from the Traitors’ Field to the Vale. Where are they? I ask. Murdered, is my captain’s answer. Murdered by base deceit and betrayal. Not slain in honest and honourable battle, but fallen to daggers and arrows wielded by curs in the pay of a family I now fear may be corrupted beyond all hope of redemption.”
Evadine paused, lowering her head as a wave of grief passed through her. Is this the time? I wondered. Is this the moment she proclaims herself the Ascendant Queen? Had I been here, I would have counselled against it, even now. We still lacked the strength for open war. However, it transpired that the Anointed Lady had something else to proclaim that day.
“And from where does this corruption arise?” she asked, raising a pale but furious visage to survey her audience with a demanding glare. “This is the question that plagues me. I will confess failure, friends. I will submit to your harsh judgement for I have been weak these past days. I have allowed myself to wallow in the seduction of hope. Hope that the struggle before us can be avoided. Hope that the Algathinets and their venal servants can be saved, turned away from the path they have been lured to. That weakness ends now. Now I see the source of their corruption. I see the wellspring of evil in this realm and will tolerate it no longer. The Malecite, friends. They have corrupted our Crown. With their whispered promises and arcane perversions, they have used the wounds of strife to infect the body of this land, and I know now the agents of their vileness. For decades have they walked among us, untroubled, welcomed even. Charm workers, we call them. Soothsayers, some will claim. Healers even. I tell you they are none of these things. The Caerith and their pestilent rites have brought us to this pass. Now is the time we say no more.”
The growl of affirmation from the crowd made it clear that, once again, the Anointed Lady’s words had found their mark. I have learned in subsequent years that it is far easier to rouse people to hate than it is to love, a lesson I think Evadine learned at a far earlier age.
“Henceforth, under Covenant law all Caerith are excluded from the Realm of Albermaine,” Evadine continued, brandishing an unfurled scroll which presumably listed this new edict in detail. “All Supplicants are commanded to instruct their parishioners to shun the Caerith in all things. None shall be given shelter by the faithful. None shall be fed by the faithful. The faithful shall not trade with or consort with the Caerith in any way. Covenant soldiery will also take necessary steps to seek out all such heathens within our borders and convey them back to their own domain, by force if needs must. This land must be cleansed, friends. Scoured clean of the arcane vileness that has laid it low. But this is only the first cleansing. To truly cure ourselves of the sickness that pollutes all, be they of the commons, the Covenant, or the nobility, must receive the blessing of my hand, for only in my hand resides the favour of the Seraphile. Therefore, I summon the boy named as King Arthin Algathinet to Athiltor to receive my blessing. Should he refuse, I will go to Couravel and insist upon it. Will you march with me when I do?”
The cheers were perhaps the loudest I ever heard her receive, making it clear that the numbers of adherents in the city had swollen in my absence. Even so, I barely heard it, my attention being solely focused on Evadine still brandishing her edict, calling out her demand over and over again. The crowd roaring ever louder each time.
“Will you march with me?! Will you march with me?!”
The chant began then, the discordant chaos of adulation shifting into a familiar refrain, one I had hoped left behind when the Sacrifice March met its bloody terminus at the Battle of the Vale: “We live for the Lady! We fight for the Lady! We die for the Lady!”
CHAPTER NINE
The door to Evadine’s chambers was closed and guarded by two armed Supplicants I didn’t know, a man and a woman so similar in stature and feature they must have been siblings, perhaps twins.
“The Lady is in communion, my lord…” the male Supplicant began, his angular face registering a peevish shock at my snarling response as I shoved him aside and pounded on the door.
“Get the fuck out of the way!” Hinges rattled and timbers shook under my fist. “Evadine!”
“The lady,” the Supplicant said, grasping my arm, “is in communion.”
I rounded on him, staring into a stern, unyielding face. It was the kind of face I had encountered many times, one not easily cowed and exuding an implacable sense of duty. Whoever these two were, Evadine had chosen her guards well.
“Step back, my lord,” he instructed me. The tightening of his grip on my arm had me taking the required backward step, but only in order to draw my sword.
Blood would certainly have been spilled in that hallway if Evadine hadn’t chosen to open the door. I expected to find her defiant. Instead, the face that appeared in the gap was chastened, fearful even. It lingered for just an instant before retreating into the gloomy recess of her chambers. “Lord Alwyn may enter,” I heard her say in a thin voice.
“Put your hand on me again,” I told the male guard as I pushed into the room, “and you’ll find out what it’s like to endure life without it.”
Slamming the door behind me, I forced a few calming breaths into my lungs before turning to confront Evadine. She had removed her armour and stood clad in a woollen shawl covering her plain cotton trews and shirt. A fire blazed in the hearth but I saw her shiver, eyes averted from mine.
“An Edict of Exclusion?” I asked. Although I tried to quell my anger, my voice still shook as I spoke. Thanks to Sihlda’s history lessons, I knew such a thing was not unprecedented. King Mathis III had issued one against a particularly bothersome clan of Vergundians. The Luminants’ Council had attempted a similar tactic a century before when an irksomely popular sect arose to threaten a schism. Never before had one been issued against the Caerith, however.
“I had to,” Evadine said, her voice little more than a tremulous mutter.
“That’s where Wilhum’s gone, isn’t it?” I advanced towards her. “He’s not scouring the woods for outlaws. You sent him to round up all the Caerith he can find and drag them to the border.”
“I had to,” she repeated, backing away. Unusually, her long hair hung free today, veiling eyes that darted scared glances at my face.
“The Caerith.” Reaching her, I felt an urge to clamp my arms to her shoulders, shake answers free of her lips. Instead, I forced myself to a halt, glaring at her downcast visage behind a curtain of dark tresses. “The people who saved me, healed me, sent me back to you. One of them rides and fights at my side. Do you intend to have me cast her out?”
“She can stay.” I saw a glimmer of solicitation behind the veil. “An exception granted for her loyal service. My boon to you…”
“I don’t want your fucking boon!”
Once again, the urge rose to grab her. Rage and, absurdly, a welling of lust causing my hands to shake. Even with my anger boiling, my mind chose to summon images of our past intimacy, provoking a compulsion to strip her naked, lay her down. She wouldn’t stop me. Some lustful instinct told me so. The way her eyes brightened behind their covering, the way her arms slipped to her sides, opening in invitation. Passion, it seemed, can be stirred as easily by enmity as affection.
Metreveus. It seemed is if I heard this word spoken rather than in my head, and the voice that spoke it was not my own. It was the voice I remembered from all those lessons imparted down in the dark, the voice that stood alone in the story of my life for only ever speaking truth. Metreveus, it said again and I felt the desire seep from me. Tyrant. Persecutor. A lesson Sihlda had never in fact taught me, but surely would have.
“How many battles for us?” I asked, turning away from her, finding the intense heat of the fire preferable to her regard. “How many lives lost and taken? All on your word, Evadine. This is not what I fought for.”
“You know I do not have agency over the visions afforded me,” she said, a steadiness creeping into her tone now. “The Seraphile grant me knowledge and I must act upon it.”
For the first time I was forced to confront a question I had, through a good deal of sophistry and distraction, avoided: What, in truth, are her visions? Until now, I had veered between a nebulous conviction that she was in fact receiving messages from beyond the Divine Portals, and the thought that she might possess a form of the arcane power the Caerith called vaerith. Her visions were too accurate to deny. Too consistent in the outcomes they wrought to be merely the product of a disturbed mind. Of course, such pondering soon revived the historian’s words, though I pushed them away with firm resolve. Evadine serves the Malecite.
She has done too much good, I insisted to myself. We have done too much together for it all to be in service to the malign.
“The Seraphile told you to harry and hunt the Caerith?” I asked her, my anger diminished now, but still it put a quaver in my voice. “It hardly seems like an act born of eternal grace?”
“They showed me, Alwyn.” She moved closer, her hand clasping mine. “They gifted me a vision of the world’s fate if we do not do this. I know your affection for these people, but even you can see the danger they pose. The power they possess threatens us. I have known this all my life, from the day my father set a Caerith charm worker to banish the visions from my mind. Then I thought him a capering fraud with his gabbled cants and rattling charms. But also I recall the fear in that man’s eyes. For years I thought it the fear of a practised liar finding himself confronted with inarguable truth. Now, I see that he feared the truth I would one day expose: the dark mission he and his kind pursue in our lands. That was why he concocted that foul physic for me to drink. He told my father it would purge me of what he called the twistings in my mind. I didn’t want to drink it, but my father insisted and I was ever a dutiful daughter. Three days of suffering followed, suffering surely intended to kill me. I writhed in a world of agony, sustained only by the knowledge that the Seraphile would surely preserve one chosen to convey their message. And preserve me they did. When I woke from my torment, the charm worker was gone, vanished in the night without even waiting for his payment.”
Her grip tightened on my hand. “Your anger pains me, Alwyn. The fact that we have to hide what we share pains me. But pain must be borne, by me and by you. Our mission is greater than us.”
I turned to her, finding her hair parted as she moved closer still, that perfect face pressing a cheek to mine, smooth warmth meeting roughened, scarred flesh. The thrill of it remained as intoxicating as ever. I recall deciding not to reach for her, then doing so, pressing her against me. I recall deciding not to kiss her, then putting my lips to hers. The kiss was long and I felt a spasm of frustrated agony when she broke it.
“Pain must be borne,” she said in a breathless whisper, casting a glance at the door.
I dragged air into my lungs and stepped back. “I’ll not be party to a purge. I’ve seen enough massacres in this life.”
“And I would not command you so. Wilhum will oversee this edict and you know his kindness. He has orders to spill no blood in this commission. The Caerith will be exiled. That is all.”
And so are paths chosen in life when we confront a crossroads. Ever, it is the easier road we tread, the one that promises familiarity, continuance, love. Many times have I cursed myself for not taking the harsher road in that moment, for it would surely have been the less treacherous. But, even now, I know that there in that room, choice was an illusion. She could have commanded me to bring fire and slaughter to all Albermaine and, despite much protestation, I would still have chosen it as the easy path, because it was her path.
I jerked my head at the door. “I don’t like your new guards.”
A relieved smile played over her lips and she pulled her shawl tight, straightening her back, once again the Anointed Lady. “Supplicants Harldin and Ildette came all the way from the Duchy of Rhianvel to swear their allegiance to our cause. There was a good deal of antipathy between the Luminants’ Council and the Covenant in Rhianvel long before Arnabus seized Athiltor. Harldin and Ildette arrived at the head of fifty armed Supplicants. They call themselves the Lady’s Shield, something I’m minded to indulge since they seem so keen upon it. They also delivered a letter signed by all the senior clerics in the duchy, recognising my authority and requesting my blessing. Isn’t that nice?”
