Rowena Daniells - The uncrowned King

He thrust the door open and they hurried in before the warm air could escape. An incredibly ancient woman bustled about setting food on the scrubbed table. She smiled and bobbed her head.

'My mother,' he explained. 'She can't hear what you say but that doesn't stop her talking.'

They took folding stools off their hooks on the walls and placed them around the table. As Feldspar took the seat next to Fyn, he muttered, 'We're not safe yet.'

'No,' Fyn agreed and raised his voice. 'Tomorrow morning, Klimen, your people need to take the boys across to Sylion.'

'That we can do.'

'You're not coming with us?' Feldspar guessed.

'Not coming?' Joff placed the sacred lamp on the table. Its jewel-encrusted gold looked out of place amidst the wooden bowls and home-made bread.

'No. The abbot told me to get the boys to Sylion Abbey and then I — '

'You have to warn the king,' Feldspar finished for him.

Fyn nodded. 'You must tell the abbess how the Merofynians lured our warriors out and ignored the sanctity of the abbey. She'll see it's in Sylion's best interest to help Halcyon's monks to survive.'

Feldspar met Fyn's eyes. 'The Merofynians will kill you first chance they get. Take some of us with you.'

Fyn had already thought this through. 'One can escape detection more easily than several. I don't want anyone dying because of me.' No, the abbot had already paid that price. If his friends knew the truth they would not be looking up to him right now.

'Ah, food, at last. Thank you, grandmother.' Joff accepted a bowl of fish stew. 'Don't look so down, Feldspar. Fyn will get through to the king, who'll rout the Merofynians. You'll see. One day it will be Abbot Fyn. I'll be weapons master and you'll be mystics master.'

But Feldspar was in no mood for jesting. 'How can I become mystics master, when there is no one to train me?' He sighed. 'So much lost.'

'You can rebuild the abbey in all its glory. You have your lives,' Lame Klimen told them.

Both Feldspar and Joff looked to Fyn.

'Thanks to you,' Feldspar said.

He could not meet their eyes. Instead, he looked up at the single window, dark with snow, visualising his father's castle across the valley, directly opposite Sylion Abbey as the crow flies, but since he was not a crow Fyn would have to walk around the base of Mount Halcyon, borrow skates, cross Viridian Lake and thread his way along the canals to Sapphire Lake. 'The king must know of this treachery. If the Merofynians don't respect the sanctity of the abbey, who knows where they will stop?'

What if the unthinkable happened? What if Rolenhold fell? Would the Merofynians recognise the time-honoured right of royal captives to be held hostage, or would they simply execute Piro and his mother?

He had to get home.

Piro longed to ask her mother's advice, but Cobalt was sure to have spies watching the queen. If he had remembered a little detail like Piro's love for her foenix, he won't have left any avenue open for her to reach her mother or father.

Even so, after she had eaten, she found her feet taking her to the mourning tower, where her mother was captive. The tower's courtyard was filled with animals, which the townsfolk had penned in hastily rigged shelters. Chickens and goats had settled for the night, making the area smell like a farm yard. And there, at the top of the steps to the tower's first floor, was one of the king's honour guard.

That reminded her of Sawtree. She knew of a window where she could look down into the stable courtyard. She'd go there next and see what she could do for the old guard.

The guard in front of her was one of the young ones loyal to Cobalt, lord protector of the castle. That role should have gone to Captain Temor…

That reminded her of Temor and his stand at the last gate. A sob caught in her throat.

Furious, she pressed the pads of her fingers into her eye sockets until she saw swirling patterns of rage. No point in crying. No point in feeling sorry for herself. Feel sorry for Sawtree instead. Maybe there was something she could do for him… sneak him food, since she had saved some from her last meal. Or, if she was really lucky, she might slip him a knife and he could free himself when he had the chance. How had Cobalt punished him, by crippling him? She hoped it wasn't something permanent.

One more grubby maid amongst so many, Piro made her way to the wing that overlooked the stable courtyard. It housed the castle hospice, packed now with injured townsfolk. Many had loved ones with them, nursing them, so there was a constant coming and going, with children crying and grown-ups bickering over space.

From a narrow window in the hospice she saw a man in the centre of the courtyard with his arms tied above his head, toes off the ground, head slumped. There was an ominous dark patch in the snowy ground under his feet. It was only as he slowly swung around that she saw the arrows in his chest. Stunned, she found it hard to credit what she saw.

It appeared as though, at Cobalt's orders, Sawtree's fellow men-at-arms had used him for target practice.

Impotent anger rose up in her, threatened to choke her, and hot tears ran down her cheeks as she left the hospice. Cobalt would pay for this.

Miserable fury raged through her as she wandered her home, recalling the many dreams where she had run down the corridors chased by wyverns, the Merofynian symbol. She should have heeded those dreams instead of trying to quell them with dreamless-sleep.

Halcyon must have been watching over Piro, for she found herself near the goddess's chantry with no memory of how she got there. She had slept under the nave last night. With the wardess dead there was only the healer to serve the temple and both Halcyon and Sylion's healers had been caring for her father. So the chantry would be empty of nuns.

As Piro had suspected it was empty of church officials, but thick with the scent of burning votive candles and full of desperate townspeople, praying to the goddess to bring them to safety. Piro entered, just one more desperate penitent. She ignored her royal family's private box and found a dark corner where she prayed, then dozed.

Not the cold, not the hard stone or the crowding, nothing could not stop her from falling into the deep sleep. Tomorrow was another day. Things would be better.

She had to believe this.

Fyn should have been asleep on the stone hearth in front of Lame Klimen's fire but he could not rest. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw himself fleeing down the abbey's stair while the others held off the Merofynians on the landing above.

He knew it was illogical to feel guilty about leaving the old masters and his fellow acolytes to die — without him, Lenny and the rest of the boys would have been trapped and killed. But this did not stop the sick rush of emotion.

It had been the kind of critical tactical decision the weapons master had been training him for all this time and he understood it, even if he didn't like it.

What really ate away at him was the knowledge that, if he hadn't frozen, the abbot might still be alive and able to rebuild the abbey.

Why had he seized up? He'd never failed in practice.

That was practice, this was nothing like the bouts with the weapons master.

Oakstand had taught that sometimes it was necessary to kill to save an innocent life. But when Fyn had imagined enemies they were faceless warriors with bad hearts, not ordinary men like his father's loyal men-at-arms, whose misfortune it was to serve the wrong king.

He rolled over and tried to think of something pleasant. At least Piro was safe in Rolenhold. But this didn't make him feel any better. He felt a niggle of worry every time he thought of her.

Feldspar jerked awake, alert and troubled, hand pressed to his heart.