Janny Wurts - The Ships of Merior

The old blood clans elsewhere had far less in the centuries since the merchant guilds had overset kingdom rule, and headhunters rode to claim bounties.

None of Arithon’s envoy travelled mounted, which explained the scout’s misleading first report. Maenalle reached the palings that served as the outpost’s main gate just as the arrivals from Rathain filed through. Except for the eastern inflection as one commented, ‘Ath, will you look? This place could pass for a village,’ the party might have blended with one of her patrols, Jieret’s band were weather-worn, observant to the point of edged wariness, and dressed in leathers lacking any dyes or bright ornaments. Their weapons had seen hard use, and every last man carried scars.

The rangy, tangle-haired red-head who stepped out to present his courtesies was no exception. Near to her grandson’s age he might be, yet when he arose from his bow and towered over her, Maenalle revised her assessment. The eyes that met hers were chilly and wide, the mouth amid a gingery bristle of beard, fixed and straight. This was no green youth, but a man of seventeen years who had seen his sisters and parents die in the service of his liege. Grief and premature responsibilities left their mark: a boy of twelve had grown up with the burden of safeguarding the north against the wave of vengeance-bent aggression that had dogged his people ever since the year the Mistwraith’s malice had overset Rathain’s peace.

In Tysan, where the feud between townborn and clan burned hotly enough without impetus from geas-cursed princes, Lady Maenalle shrank to imagine what extremity might bring this man to leave his native glens, to abandon his people and risk an overland journey through hostile territory to seek her.

‘My Lord Earl,’ she murmured. ‘Forgive the lacklustre welcome, but surely you bring us bad news?’ She accepted his kiss on her cheek and stepped back, unwilling to test her dignity too long against the younger man’s frightening sense of presence.

Jieret bent upon Tysan’s lady steward the unsettling intuition inherited from his late mother. ‘We’ve surprised you.’ The blood on her boots did not escape him, nor the reserve behind her caithdein’s black. ‘Let me ease your mind. We didn’t call you back from the joys of the summer hunt to beg armed support for the sake of my liege lord, Arithon.’

‘Not hers to give, if you had,’ grumbled Tashan.

The comment fell through a misfortunate lull in the racket made by curious children. Stung into movement like a bothered bear, a grizzled, fifty-ish war captain with inimical black eyes elbowed past his young chieftain’s shoulder.

Don’t flatter yourselves for restraint.’ Caolle loosed a clipped laugh. ‘His Grace of Rathain’s quite vicious enough on points of pride without anybody’s outside help. He’d spurn even gold that fell at his feet, did it come to him struck with his name on it.’

Unsettled to learn the prince himself had not backed this surprise delegation, Maenalle forestalled the airing of issues more wisely discussed in private. ‘Your war captain sounds like a traveller sorely in need of a beer.’

‘Well, beer won’t help,’ Caolle groused. ‘Just a fair chance at gutting that blond-haired prandey who lounges in silk, and sends every trained sword in Etarra and beyond thrashing the countryside to harrow us.’

The trail scouts who guided the visitors stiffened, and a youngster close enough to overhear shouted, ‘Hey! That man called our lord prince the Shandian word for a gelded pleasure bo-’

Maenalle spun swiftly and grabbed the child by the shoulder. ‘Don’t say such filth. Your mother would thrash you. And you shouldn’t be concerned with your elders’ speech when to my knowledge you aren’t on my council.’

The miscreant gasped an apology, darted an enraged glance at Caolle, then sidled away as his lady chieftain released him. To the red-bearded caithdein and his grinning, insolent war captain, the steward of the Kingdom of Tysan finished in flat exasperation, ‘By Ath, this visit of yours had better justify the aggravation.’

To which Earl Jieret s’Valerient said nothing. That the two gifted men who had restored Athera’s sunlight were entrapped in an enmity which bent their bright and deadly talents against each other was a havoc too heartsore for reason.

Neither was he inclined to dwell on ceremony. Minutes later, seated by an untouched glass of wine across the planks of the outpost’s scarred council table, he pulled a letter from the breast of his tunic. The dispatch was speckled with bloodstains. Since affairs between clans were never committed to writing, Maenalle’s eyes flicked at once to discern which town seal impressed the broken wax.

Deshir’s youthful earl saw her interest. ‘The seal was royal, and Tysan’s.’ A reluctant pause, then his quick movement as he offered the missive across the trestle. ‘This was captured from a guild courier riding the Mathorn Road under heavy escort. A state copy, you’ll see, bound for official record with the trade guilds at Erdane. Clan lives were lost to intercept it. We must presume the original reached its destination.’

Maenalle accepted the folded parchment, its ribbons and gilded capitols done in the ornate style of Etarran scribes. She verified her kingdom’s star blazon in its couch of indigo wax. Her glance at the flamboyant heading raised a flash-fire rush of antagonism. ‘But our prince was disbarred from royal privilege! Why should he presume to write under Tysan’s crown seal importuning the Mayor Elect of Korias?’

‘Read,’ growled Caolle.

White in dismay, Maenalle scanned down the lines, growing tenser and angrier, until even Lord Tashan’s drywitted tolerance snapped. ‘What’s in that?’

‘A petition.’ Jieret all but spat on the beaten earth floor. ‘From a prince denied right of sovereignty demanding title and grant to lands and city. By claim of birth, Lysaer s’Ilessid seeks leave to restore Tysan’s capitol at Avenor.’

‘He’ll never get it,’ Tashan said, halfway to his feet in indignation. ‘Never mind that the merchant guilds won’t stand a royal presence, the palace is in ruins, now. Not one stone stands upright on a foundation since the rebellion wrecked the old order. Past fears will prevail. Not a townborn mason would set foot there, haunted as they believe the site to be. And no clan in this kingdom can endorse a s’Ilessid claim without lawful sanction from the Fellowship.’

‘But that’s half the point,’ Jieret said, too emphatically calm for a man under twenty years of age. ‘The trade guilds in West End have nothing to lose. If the old land routes are rejoined with the Camris roads, they’ll gain profits. The Mayor Elect in Korias will draw up the documents just for the chance to slight royalty. He’s isolated enough not to know your deposed prince has the finesse to create the impossible. Daelion as my witness, in just five years Lysaer’s reconciled Etarra’s stew of rival factions. He’s got guild ministers and town councilmen kissing like brothers, and every independent city garrison in the Kingdom of Rathain conniving to exterminate my clansmen. If Lysaer can whip up armies to challenge a shadow master and a sorcerer, do you think he can’t get walls and barbicans built around the shades of a few thousand ghosts?’

‘Royal sanction or not, your prince won’t lack funds for his enterprise,’ broke in Caolle. ‘The towns are bothered to panic. To curry favour with the man whose gift of light offers protection against wild fears of Arithon’s shadows, every trade guild owing notes to Etarra has offered their gold to fund armies. What townsman would pause to sort the difference between Arithon’s feal liegemen and clanborn everywhere else?’ Caolle slammed opened hands on the table, causing the thick planks to jump. ‘Fiends! They’re not so damned stupid, citybred fools though they be. If his Grace of Rathain turned up in any clan haven asking guest right, what chieftain would refuse him hospitality?’