Janny Wurts - To Ride Hell’s Chasm

Devall’s heir apparent squared his neat shoulders, loath to dwell on the indelicacy. ‘I realize Kailen likes to prowl like a tomcat. I also know him as a friend. To speak plainly, he has too much intelligence for the confines of his station. He acts frivolously because the peace and isolation here don’t grant him any chance to test his wits. Appearances aside, I would credit his maturity this much. He loves his sister and this kingdom too well to have drunk himself into a stupor last night.’

‘I would have thought so,’ Taskin agreed, even that trifling confidence divulged with a reluctance that crossed his straight grain. ‘On that score, my inquiry is now being delayed. Let me dispatch an honour guard to see you—’

But the High Prince of Devall raised a magnanimous palm. ‘Spare your guardsmen, commander. I will seek Collain Herald myself.’

Taskin nodded. In person, the heir apparent would make himself heard, and receive the king’s ear without help. Forced to acknowledge the young royal’s earnestness, he unbent and ushered the contingent from Devall to the head of the balcony stair.

While the party made their way out through the wardroom, Taskin watched from the gallery railing. Once the lower door closed and restored his broached privacy, he addressed the guardsman his orders had held at attention throughout Devall’s interview. ‘What do you think, based on those facts you know?’

The man cleared his throat. ‘Facts only? No one saw where Captain My sh kael went after he slipped our charge at the Middlegate. Prince Kailen was drunk when I set him on horseback. Sergeant Stennis had his Highness borne back to the garrison keep by two men culled from the street watch. No unusual report there—they’d scooped the prince from the arms of a whore, merry on too much whisky. The tavern was one of his usual haunts. Nobody mentioned him, sober.’

The commander held his stance, rod-straight and unspeaking as his survey combed over the vacated wardroom. Reassured that no bit of armour was out of place, and that each weapon rested keen on its rack, he attended the unfinished detail at his back with his usual cryptic handling. ‘Very well, soldier. For your incompetence last night, ride down and find My sh kael, soonest. On my orders, you’ll tell the garrison captain he’s to see me in person and address each point where his report failed to meet my satisfaction.’

Taskin spun and prowled back to his desk, the buffed braid on his surcoat a scorching gleam of gold, and his censure as painfully piercing. ‘An unnecessary summons , had you kept your watch, soldier. You’ll suffer the fire of that desert-bred’s temper as your due penalty for slacking. If the creature is contrary or difficult, and he should be, keep your professional bearing in hand. Your orders stand: make sure the man comes. Recall that I hold the outstanding matter of the captain’s overdue punishment. When My sh kael is finished with making you miserable, and only after you’ve brought him to heel through the Highgate, you can sting his pride with that fact, as you choose.’

‘You want him sent into your presence well nettled?’ the guard ventured, then caught Taskin’s glare, and leaped in chastened strides towards the doorway.

The Commander of the Guard subsided behind his gleaming marble desk. He restored the papers sequestered beneath the brick, then finished his vexed thought in solitude. ‘I’ll pressure those war-sharpened instincts, damned right. The captain will answer me straight, if he’s hazed. Easier to read through an unruly rage, and know whether he might be lying.’

Mykkael, at that moment, had not answered the thunderous knock that pounded the door to his quarters.

‘He won’t trust a lock,’ admitted the fresh young officer standing watch as Vensic’s relief. ‘No bar, either. The latch should open without forcing.’

‘That’s just as well,’ Jussoud answered, ‘since I dislike having to break things.’

The steppelands-bred foreigner seemed not to mind, that Highgate orders had assigned him to handle a demeaning round of service at the garrison. Nor had he asked for a lackey’s assistance. His huge frame was still burdened with his basket of oils, a satchel of strong remedies, and the round, wooden tub the keep laundress used to wash surcoats. With unruffled dignity, he nodded to the stableboys strung out behind, who carried yoked buckets dipped from the horse trough. ‘Open up, lads. We’re all going in.’

The ragged boys shrank back in wide-eyed hesitation, less afraid of the easterner’s slant, silver eyes than of the dire prospect of disrupting the captain’s peace.

‘Damn you for a pack of cowards, boys!’ snapped the officer to the column, that snaked halfway down the dim stairwell. ‘Captain’s not in, or quite likely asleep. And no wonder it is, if he’s out like the deaf. Crazy desert-bred hasn’t been off his feet for all of three days and two nights.’

‘Easy for you to say,’ the head stableboy sniped as his fellows jostled on to the landing behind him. ‘You’re not in front, and anyway, you were off duty the last time a man tried his luck barging in on the captain.’

Jussoud bared his blunt teeth in a grin. ‘He got Mykkael’s knife at his throat for presumption?’

The stableboy scowled. ‘No knife. No sword, either. Just the heel of a hand, fast as lightning. Broke the man’s nose all the same. Captain Mykkael didn’t waste words, wasn’t sorry. “Here’s a rag for the bleeding,” he said, “and what did the brainless grunt think he deserved, for crossing a doorway without taking soldier’s precautions.”‘

‘Here’s proper precautions,’ Jussoud said, agreeable, and offered the base of the wash tub as a shield.

Moved to awe, the skinny stableboy ducked inside the massive nomad’s protection. At Jussoud’s sly urging, he tripped the latch, and breached Mykkael’s guarded privacy.

The captain was asleep, his lean form sprawled like a tiger’s over the blanket that covered his pallet. His sword harness lay flat, at hand’s reach on the mattress beside him. Surcoat, shirt and trousers were cast off on the floor, the heaped cloth exuding the ripe odour of bog slime through a lingering fragrance of hyacinth. Stripped down to his smallclothes, Mykkael had flouted the customs of his forebears and used fresh water to wash. Even there, field habits had trampled over nicety: the grime had been sluiced off with a rag and bucket, left standing in the bar of sunlight that shone through the arrow slit.

Propped at his bare feet, unwrapped, the princess’s portrait regarded him.

Her exquisite likeness struck a note out of place in that rudely furnished chamber. The lush splendour of the oil paint glowed: the lucent sparkle in each rendered jewel, and the rich, velvet fall of her forest-green riding habit set into jarring contrast. Sessalie’s court painter had done the young woman’s grace more than justice; had captured the tilt of her refined chin, triangular as a waif’s beneath her netted blonde hair. The jade eyes all but breathed with inquisitive mischief, the glint that peeked through her midnight-dark lashes seeming entranced by the subject of interest—just now, a fighting man’s sculpted muscle, disfigured where mishap and the ravages of war had imprinted a uniformly brown skin.

The boys bearing the buckets stared agog. Then they elbowed and scrapped to claim the best view, amazed by a breathtaking display of scars no man born in Sessalie could imagine.

Unfazed, Jussoud set down the awkward wooden tub. He flipped back his long braid, shed the straps of his satchel and basket. As though he had ministered to lamed men all his life, he lowered the tools of his trade to the floor, not arousing a single plink from the glass. With the unhurried eyes of a healer, he read every sign of a man dropped prostrate from exhaustion. ‘You say your captain has not slept in three days?’