Mark Lawrence - The Liar's key

When Kara had finished with Snorri I tried to get her to see to my nose, after all she broke it, but she claimed it wasn’t broken and if anything I should be tending her eye.

“Jal gave you that?” Snorri looked up from the grapes he’d been trying, wincing at their sourness this early in the season.

“Long story.” I lay back quickly and stared up at the first stars, just piercing their way through the deep maroon of the sky. My shoulders burned where Edris Dean’s blood had soaked them and had started to blister and peel as if I’d been out in the sun too long. It hurt but I consoled myself with the thought it probably hurt the necromancer more. If I’d had to let another gallon flood over me to know he was dead and done it would have been a price worth paying.

I wondered if the Silent Sister had seen this when she looked into a future so bright it blinded her. Or perhaps she’d not looked past the destruction of the unborn seeking the key beneath the Bitter Ice. Had she moved to stop the Dead King gaining Loki’s key only to have her two agents of destruction, one her own flesh and blood, deliver the thing to Kelem? From what Grandmother told me Kelem was closely tied to the Lady Blue and hers was the hand that sought to steer the Dead King. We’d carried it a thousand miles and more from frozen wastes to the dry and burning hills of Florence, bringing it to the very door the Silent Sister never wanted to open. . In the end it seemed that Loki’s key had tricked even my great-aunt, reaching back through the years to fool her.

As the sun set I heard knocking. I looked around, but the others were settling down, Hennan already with his head buried in his arms. It came again, as if on all sides. I’d heard it before, in the debtors’ jail, for a minute or two. . The evening seemed full of whispers as the sky flushed crimson and the sun sank behind the mountains. The knocking came louder, then faded. I thought of Aslaug, of her dark appetites and the long-limbed beauty of her. It occurred to me, too late to act even if minded to, that I’d heard this knocking only since I held the key. Kara had somehow locked Aslaug away from me-did I now hold the means to open the way once more?

I noticed Kara watching me and decided to hang the key about my neck on a thong. Pockets are too easily picked and I didn’t trust her not to try. I’d scarcely finished tying the knots when exhaustion leapt on me from the shadows. I hadn’t slept in what seemed like days and felt as tired as I had ever been. I thought of Sageous, waiting to walk my dreams, and with a shudder I pulled the key from my shirt. I pressed it to my forehead. “Lock him out.” A whisper, but heartfelt. It seemed worth a try. I shoved the key back, yawning those huge yawns that stretch your jaw and fill your ears with the sound of sleep.

I lay down and let dreams wash around me while the stars came out in force and the hills throbbed with the song of crickets serenading the night. My grandmother’s war had swept us up, me, Snorri, Kara, the boy, Tuttugu, all of us-her sister had set us on the board and they played us. The Red Queen making her moves from the throne about which I orbited, slung north, slung south always seeking to return, and the Lady Blue watching from her mirrors, her own pieces upon the gaming table. Was Kelem hers too, I wondered, or another player?

All day, since near-choking on the blood that Kara’s punch brought flooding from my nose, the dream I’d escaped had continued to run its course, whispering at the edge of hearing, painting itself on the back of my eyelids if I blinked. Now I closed my eyes and listened hard. In my time I’d been both a player and been played. I knew which I liked best, and I knew that learning the rules is a vital first step if you intend to leave the board. One more yawn and the dream devoured me.

• • •

The banqueting hall of the great palace at Vermillion lies below me, though grander, more full, and more merry than I have ever seen it. I’m standing in the musicians’ gallery, a place I’ve crept to before to spy on feasts when I was too young to attend them-not that Grandmother is given to hosting such things, save for the great mid-winter banquet of Saturnalia, which she holds mainly to annoy the pope. Uncle Hertet on the other hand will honour any festival, pagan or otherwise, that gives an excuse to broach wine casks and summon his proxy court to the palace so they can all pretend the queen has died and play out their roles before age diminishes them further.

The hall below me however has more nobles shoulder to shoulder than Uncle Hertet ever attempted to dine, and on the walls garlands of holly and ivy festoon in profusion, berry red upon glossy emerald, chains of silver bells, and displays of swords and pole arms fanning out enough sharp iron to equip an army. I look left, then right. Alica stands to one side, a child of eleven or twelve, Garyus and his sister to the other, with me occupying the gap the twins have put between them and my grandmother. The girls stand, gripping the carved mahogany of the banister; Garyus sits, resting his ill-made legs.

The glittering crowd below hold my eye, the finery of a departed age, a fortune in silks and taffeta, each lord glittering with wealth displayed for every other. Hardly one among the hundreds would be alive when I woke, claimed by age, the children beside me old beyond my imagination. For the longest time I’d believed my grandmother had come into the world creased and seamed, carrying her wrinkles from the womb, the iron grey in her red tresses as ancient as the lichen on statues. To see her young unsettles me in ways I can’t explain. It tells me that one day it really will be my turn to be old.

The feast is almost over, though food still mounds the platters and servants scuttle hither and thither to refill and replenish. Here and there are empty seats, a lord stands, unsteady, bows toward the host, and walks toward the great doors with the overly careful gait of a man in his cups. Elsewhere guests are flagging, pushing back plates. Even the dogs at the margins of the hall have lost their enthusiasm for dropped bones, barely prepared to snarl their ownership.

At the head of the great table, presiding over fifty yards of polished oak near hidden beneath silver platters, goblets, candelabras, tureens, and ewers for wine and water, sits a man I know only from paintings. His portraits are rare enough to make me wonder if the Red Queen burned them. Gholloth, second of his name, a blond giant of a man, sits there-red-faced from the drink now, his tunic elaborately embroidered and blazoned with the red banner of the March, but wine-stained and straining at the seams. On canvas they paint him forever young and glorious as he looked on the beaches of Adora, or was imagined to look. They show him at the start of the invasion that was to tie the dukedom to the Red March throne. The War of Barges they called it because he took his forces on river barges across the sixteen miles of sea to reach Taelen Point. Now he looks to be fifty or more and wearing his years poorly, as old when he sired my grandmother as his own father had been when he sired him. Where the elder Gholloth might be I can’t say, dead perhaps, or a toothless ancient hunched upon his throne with a bowl of soup.

The twins aren’t watching their father though: the Silent Sister is staring at someone with unusual intensity, even for her, and Garyus follows her gaze, frowning. Alica and I join them. We’re watching a woman about halfway along the table. She doesn’t stand out to me, neither old nor young, not pretty, more motherly, modestly covered, her gown a lacklustre affair of black and cream, only her hair sparkles, raven-dark beneath a web of sapphires held on silver wire.

“Who is she?” Alica asks.

“Lady Shival, minor nobility from one of the Port Kingdoms, Lisboa I think.” Garyus frowns, raking his memory. “Has King Othello’s ear, an unofficial adviser of sorts.”