Elizabeth Haydon - Requiem for the Sun

The light of the harbor torches fluttered on the waves and reflected back at the night sky, a dim imitation of the waxing moon that hung stubbornly above the end of the quay, ducking in and out of the clouds racing past on the wind.

Long into the dark hours, scores of even darker figures had sworn, sweated, and spat, reaching endlessly into the bowels of the ships that lined the jetty, dragging forth their treasures in the forms of barrels and chests and loose bales of goods bound for market in Ganth, then throwing them roughly into wagons or carrying them, corded muscles straining with exertion, into the dray sleds amid muttered cursing. The dray horses, sensing the onset of a night rain, danced in their hitchings, fearing the coming thunder.

Finally, when the docks were silent, the torches had burned down to the stalk joints, and no light remained but that of the obstinate moon, Quinn emerged from the belly of the Corona and made his way down the gangplank, glancing behind him several times until he reached the pier.

The longshoremen had joined the ship’s crew in warmer, louder haunts, and were now undoubtedly drinking themselves into belligerent fits or pleasant stupors. The stench in their quarters the next morning would be a fine one, to be sure. But the smell of intestinal gas and sour vomit tomorrow would be welcome compared with what Quinn faced now at the end of the dark quay.

Quinn’s eyesight had always been acute. He had sailor’s eyes that scanned the endless horizon for a fleck of variation in the swimming expanse of monotonous gray-blue; he could tell a gull from a tern from the crow’s nest in the glare of the sun at distances that befuddled his shipmates. Still, he always doubted the accuracy of his vision in the last few moments of this familial walk, for the person he was meeting always seemed to change before his eyes as he approached.

Quinn was never quite certain, but it seemed as if the man thickened , and grew more solid, his long, thin fingers subtly gaining flesh, the shoulder; broadening slightly beneath the well-made cloak. Once Quinn thought he had caught a glimmer of blood at the edge of the seneschal’s eyes, but a closer look proved him to be mistaken. They were clear blue, cloudless as a summer sky, without a trace of red. The warmth of those eyes was almost enough to dispel the chill that never failed to creep though Quinn like a slithering vine whenever they met.

“Welcome back, Quinn.” The heat in the seneschal’s voice matched that of his eyes.

“Thank ye, m’lord.”

“I trust your voyage was successful.”

“Yessir.”

The seneschal still did not favor him with a glance, but instead stared into the lapping waves cresting under the pier. “And was it she?”

Quinn swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. “I’d say sure as certain, m’lord.”

The seneschal turned finally, and looked down at Quinn with a contemplative expression. Quinn caught it then, that smell, the faint, foul reek of human flesh in fire. He knew the odor well.

“How do you know this, Quinn? I don’t want to sail across the world for nothing; I’m sure you’d agree.”

“She wears the locket, m’lord, a shabby piece amongst all ’er jewels.”

The seneschal studied Quinn’s face for a moment, then nodded distantly. “Well, then. I suppose it’s time I paid her a visit.”

Quinn nodded dumbly in return, almost unaware of the raindrops that had begun to spatter the dockside planks.

“Thank you, Quinn. That will be all.” As if in enthusiastic agreement, the rippling glow of heat lightning undulated across the docks, punctuated a moment later by the rumble of distant thunder. The sailor bowed hurriedly and turned, scurrying back to the Corona and his tiny, dark hole belowdecks.

By the time he reached the gangplank and looked back, the figure had become part of the windy rain and the darkness again.

In the other side of die world it was raining harshly. Night was coming, bringing with it the relentless downpour that had been dogging Berthe’s mood from the moment the storm had begun at dawn, though early on it had taken the form of a mild but insistent shower. Every hour or so a wayfarer had pounded on the scullery door, begging shelter and tracking rainwater and mud from the road over her newly washed floor.

By nightfall she was livid, berating the last of the men with language so acid that the chamberlain himself had rebuked her, reminding her of the recentness of her hire and the strict standards of courtesy die Lady Cymrian expected to be in place at Haguefort, the keep of rosy brown stone in which the royal couple lived while the beautiful palace her husband was building for her nearby was being completed.

But the lady was away and had been for weeks, her absence evident in the ever-souring mood of her husband. Lord Gwydion was passing the remaining fortnight before her return in all-night meetings with his weary councilors, who privately expressed the hope that the next two weeks would come and go rapidly, given his ugly state of mind. Berthe had never met her, never even seen her, but unlike the rest of the palace staff, she did not pray for the lady’s speedy return, the lord’s bad mood notwithstanding. From what Berthe had been able to discern in her ten days’ tenure at Haguefort, the Lady Cymrian was an odd duck given to some fairly strange ideas.