Энтони Райан - Queen of Fire

Veliss came to her somewhere past midnight. They had reverted to keeping separate rooms in the aftermath of the siege, more at the Lady Counsellorʼs insistence than hers. Their numerous indiscretions might have been overlooked in the storm of daily battle, but the city had begun to resume a strange normality now the corpses and the worst of the rubble had been cleared away, and the cathedral reopened.

“Are you sure you want to meet them alone?” Veliss asked. They lay side by side, covered in a faint sheen of sweat, Reva enjoying the feel of the Lady Counsellorʼs unbound hair clinging to her skin.

“They need to know I speak with my own mind,” she replied. “Given what I have to tell them.”

“They wonʼt like it…”

“I should hope so.” She pulled Veliss closer, pressing a kiss to her lips to forestall further discussion.

“Lady Alornis,” Veliss said, a while later. “You care for her.”

“She is a friend to me, like her brother.”

“No more than that?”

“Jealous, Honoured Counsellor?”

“Trust me, you donʼt want to see me jealous.” She raised herself up, hugging her knees. “I was always going to leave, you know. When the war was done, if your uncle had lived. Take the gold he offered and go. Never cared about all the names they called me, or the Readerʼs sneering condescension. But I was getting tired of it all, the lies and the intrigue. Even for a former spy, it can grow wearisome.”

Reva reached out to stroke her naked back. “And now?”

“Now I canʼt imagine being anywhere else.” Reva felt her tense in anticipation of her next words. “The Queenʼs Crusade…”

“Is my crusade. And not a topic for discussion.”

“Do you think she would be so welcoming if she knew your true nature? If she knew about us?”

“Unless it proved an impediment to liberating this Realm, I doubt she would care one whit.” She recalled her first meeting with the queen, the fierce intelligence shining through the seared mask of her face, and the implacable determination, the singularity of purpose Reva recognised from infrequent youthful glances at her own reflection. But I was sent in search of a myth, she thought. Her quarry is all too real, and I doubt sheʼll be satisfied with however many we find at Varinshold. “In truth,” she confessed to Veliss, “that woman scares me more than the Volarians ever did.”

“Then why follow her?”

“Because he does. He tells me this is necessary. I once failed to heed his words, Iʼll not make the same mistake again.”

“Heʼs just a man,” Veliss murmured, although Reva could hear the uncertainty in her voice. The tale was on every set of lips, Cumbraelins as enraptured by it as all the others, flying far and wide with every telling. One man, cutting his way through an army to save a city, and living to tell the tale.

Living? Reva remembered how his features had sagged that day, her tears and the pounding rain washing the blood away as she screamed at him to stay with her. But he hadnʼt, she had seen it plainly. For those few seconds, he had not been in his body.

“Iʼll need you to take care of things while Iʼm gone,” she said. “Rebuild as best you can. Iʼll leave Lord Arentes here as surety of my word, though no doubt heʼll hate me for it. How about a new title? Vice-Governess, maybe? Iʼm sure you can come up with something better.”

Veliss hugged her legs tighter. “I donʼt want titles, I just want you.”

Lords Arentes and Antesh preceded her into the cathedral, striding through the cavernous interior towards the Readerʼs chambers as she followed with twenty of the House Guard at her back. The two priests standing guard at the chamber door were subdued without particular difficulty, Lord Arentes thrusting the doors open and standing aside to allow her entry. Reva paused at the sight of the priest held to the wall by Lord Antesh, a sallow-faced man with a heavily bandaged hand and misshapen nose.

“I never learned your name,” she said.

The priest scowled and said nothing until Antesh gave him a none-too-gentle shake. “My name is for the Father alone.”

“And I believe he wants you to share it.” She beckoned two guards forward. “Take this one to Lady Veliss. Tell her I think he would benefit from some herbal medicine.”

She turned back to the open door as they hustled the priest away, entering at a sedate pace and offering a brisk greeting to the seven old men she found seated at a circular table. “Good bishops!” There were supposed to be ten but three had perished in the siege, not, she suspected, by virtue of any courageous act.

One of the bishops struggled to his feet as she walked to the only empty chair at the table, a wizened and bird-like man she recalled had objected when she gave the cathedral over to the care of the wounded. “This is the holy conclave of the ten bishops,” he sputtered. “You are not permitted…”

He fell silent as Lord Arentes brought a gauntleted fist down hard on the table. “The correct form of address for the Lady Governess,” he told the quailing cleric, “is ‘my lady.ʼ And no door in this city is barred to her.”

Reva paused at the empty chair, naturally the most ornate in the room with an ample cushion for the old bastardʼs bony behind. She sighed and pushed it out of her way. Canʼt kill him twice, moreʼs the pity.

“Now, now, my Lord Commander,” she told Arentes. “We should respect the good bishopsʼ privacy. Leave us, for we have much to discuss.”

They sat in dumb silence as the doors closed with an echoing boom. She waited for it to fade before speaking, all vestige of respect stripped from her tone. “So, have you chosen?”

Only one spoke up, a slight man with a prominent nose, a little younger than his colleagues. “We had not yet counted the ballots, my lady.” He indicated a plain wooden box in the centre of the table.

“Then do so now.”

Reva studied him closely as he reached for the box, finding she remembered his face from the day the Reader died, one who smiled when she charged the old man. A possible ally? She steeled her thoughts against the suggestion; Markenʼs revelations left no room for accommodation. I have no friends in this room.

“The Bishop of the Southern Parish,” the thin bishop reported after counting the ballots. “By unanimous assent.”

Reva scanned the faces around the table, finding six scared old men and one sleeping ancient who hadnʼt raised his head since her entry. “Who is?” she enquired.

The thin bishop cleared his throat in discomfort. “I am, my lady.”

She gave a short laugh and turned her back on him, her gaze drawn to a candlelit alcove at the rear of the chamber where ten large tomes sat on lecterns. The books were ancient, the bindings flaking and cracked with age. The first to be bound in the land of Cumbrael, she knew, finding it odd that she felt no upswelling of awe at the sight. Just a collection of old books in a room of old men.

“I have in my possession,” she said, turning back to the table, “what I believe to be a complete list of adherents to the heretical sect known as the Sons of the Trueblade. In due course each and every name on this list will be captured and put to the question. I am sure you will join me in rejoicing at this news, given the wealth of intelligence they are sure to provide.”

She scanned each face in turn, finding confusion on most, but fear on others. They knew, she realised. Not all, but some. She saw how the Bishop of the Southern Parish avoided her gaze, a few beads of sweat forming on his wrinkled brow. Him in particular. She was right; there were no allies here.