Janny Wurts - To Ride Hell’s Chasm

Mykkael swore under his breath with brisk feeling. Then he braced his left hand on the trestle and pushed himself back to his feet. He was still snuffing candles when Vensic arrived, bearing a flat item wrapped in a quilt.

‘Come in, the door’s open,’ Mykkael snapped, resigned.

‘Breached, more like.’ The good-natured officer of the keep cat-footed inside, sniffed once, then grinned in farm-bred appreciation over the melange of bog reek and perfume. ‘You asked for something from the palace?’

Mykkael turned his head, saw the package brought up from the wardroom, then nodded. ‘A portrait. Her Grace’s likeness, don’t handle it carelessly’

Vensic noted the scattered sheets on the trestle, frowned, then settled for propping his burden on top of the rumpled pallet. ‘I see now why that dignitary left looking singed.’

‘In the hands, or the tongue?’ Mykkael finished his rounds, reached the stool, parked his leg. ‘No shame in him, sadly. Only self-righteous contempt.’ Since his fingers were trembling too severely to light the oil lamp, he was forced to waste, and leave the last candle burning.

‘You should rest,’ Vensic suggested in tentative quiet.

‘Not just yet.’ Mykkael clamped both hands on the trestle to stay upright as a cramp wracked his leg and shot fire through his lower back. The paroxysm subsided. He flipped through his papers, restoring their order, then paused. His fingertip traced down the list sent by Taskin, detailing the names of who had passed Highgate from the precinct of the palace. Prince Kailen’s name appeared near the top. The entry beneath had been altered.

Mykkael’s questing touch sensed the rough patch where someone had lifted the script. The name of a servant had been scribed in the blank, the ink on that line just barely fuzzed by the telltale hatch of torn fibre. The captain ran a testing thumb over the trestle, and encountered the trace grit of blotting sand.

That detail niggled. Here in the garrison, an erasure was more likely to be scraped with a knife, with the ink of an overstrike left to dry without any civilized niceties.

‘Something wrong?’ Vensic asked.

‘Perhaps.’ Mykkael resettled the whetstone on top of the list. Then he grasped his leg, hauled, and endured the flash of white pain as he propped the limb straight on the trestle. ‘Send for Jedrey. If he’s home, fetch him back.’

After a moment of expansive surprise, Vensic left on the errand.

Mykkael undid the bone buttons at his calf, jerked open his cuff, then ploughed his thumbs over the traumatized tissue knotted above his scarred joint. Given no better remedy, he reached for the tinned salve. Damn all to the fact he would hear from Jussoud, he had little choice but to keep himself upright and functional.

The night duty sergeant arrived at the threshold sooner than he expected. Born above Highgate, Jedrey was not wont to knock for the sake of a desert-bred’s dignity. Still dressed, but not armed, the lordly man had not shed his grimed surcoat, a sure indication he had been in the wardroom, and not at home with his wife.

A stickler for propriety, he never addressed his ranking captain outright, but waited in surly silence.

Mykkael did not look up from his knee, which appeared to consume his attention. ‘From the Middlegate sentry’s report, by your memory, at what hour did Devall’s party pass through? Say how many rode in that company?’

Jedrey scrubbed his chin with the back of one hand, to a grating scrape of blond stubble. He detested such tests. Yet he had learned along with the rest to handle the nuisance in his stride. ‘The man serves as crown advocate for Devall’s heir apparent. He passed the Middlegate with six servants in tow, just after his Highness, our Prince Kailen.’

Mykkael smothered his first impulse to look up. He said, through a grimace as the salve seared his skin, ‘They went together? Be precise, Sergeant.’

‘Perhaps.’ Jedrey shuffled his feet, barely able to rein back impertinence. ‘Devall’s advocate could have stepped back to allow his Highness due precedence for royal rank. If so, your common-born sentry might not have recognized the finesse of a well-bred man showing good manners.’

The predictable note of admonition was there, for the late, callous handling of the lowlanders who were the captain’s evident betters.

Mykkael stifled laughter, his face kept deadpan. Adept at keeping snob sergeants in line, he turned a drilling glance sideways. ‘Tell me, how many of that party just left?’

Jedrey flushed, a patched red that made his blue eyes flash like gem-stone. ‘I did not count their individual backsides. They were angry.’

‘Better worry quick on your own behalf, soldier,’ Mykkael said with edged quiet. ‘I am angry. Inside this keep, off duty or not, I expect a man to keep his eyes open.’

A pointless exercise, to argue that Sessalie was not at war; that such vigilance was unnecessary for patrolling town streets; Jedrey choked back outrage, then found himself off-balanced again by Mykkael’s next clipped question. ‘Why are you still here, Sergeant?’

Jedrey succumbed to the prodding at last, rage couched in his upper-crust accent. ‘You should be in bed. You’re not. That’s no man’s business but yours, don’t you think?’

Mykkael mopped the salve off his competent fingers, one mahogany knuckle at a time. ‘I don’t have a wife left fretting at home. That means you had business and purpose, for staying. Under this roof, soldier, you answer to me.’

No man in the keep contradicted that tone. Jedrey unburdened, his delivery professional. ‘Your seeress was found. In the moat, stone-dead, no mark on her, no foul play’ He curled his lip, his insolent regard sweeping over his captain’s stained surcoat. ‘But you knew that fact already, did you not?’

Mykkael shifted his lamed leg to the floor. ‘My swim happened outside the walls,’ he said, quite suddenly dangerous.

That gleam, in his eyes, shot chills over Jedrey. His overbred arrogance withered. ‘The news just came in, this minute. You sent for me. And I’ve told you.’

‘So you did.’ Mykkael’s tone was cut glass. ‘Since, for self-importance, you delayed the delivery, you can stay on duty and execute my orders. I want the old woman’s body brought here. Get Beyjall, the apothecary, also the physician who lives at the north corner of Fane Street. Let them see if the victim was poisoned or drowned.’

‘She was piss drunk,’ Jedrey stated, stiff under that peeling reprimand. ‘Her heart probably stopped.’

Mykkael shook his head, saddened. ‘The old besom hated and feared open water. Her family knows this. She never went near the moat, drunk or sober.’

‘Foul play?’ Jedrey said, his quick temper dissolved, as it must, to this captain’s deft handling.

‘I think so.’ Mykkael’s desert features were shadowed with pity, and an odd flash of recrimination. ‘Powers deliver her sad, crazy spirit, I think she died very badly’

‘You act as though you killed the old fool,’ Jedrey snapped.

He found himself summarily dismissed, and departed, brooding upon his captain’s fiercely kept silence.

SPRING SUNRISE BROKE OVER THE KINGDOM OF SESSALIE, THE PEAKED O ROOF OF THE PALACE A DIMMED GREY OUTLINE, MASKED OVER IN FOG. Inside the walled town, the streets lay choked also. The carved eaves of the houses plinked silvered droplets on to wet cobbles where the slop takers made rounds with their carts and their singsong chants for collection. If the seasonal mist shrouding the morning was normal, the spreading word of Princess Anja’s disappearance cast unease like a spreading blight. The lamplighters had snuffed their wicks and gone home, bearing rumour to garrulous wives. The taverns that should have been shuttered and closed showed activity behind steamy casements.