“Oh, don’t bother,” Ochan muttered down below. “I’ll get a lantern from the watchmen.”

There was shouting then, and a sudden clatter of running feet.

Ammen sprang to his feet, but his father snapped, “Stay down, boy,” and he did as he was told.

He heard the door smash open once more, saw sudden bursts of torchlight rushing across the walls, careening through the roof beams, as men came in out of the night.

“What do you want here, you little…” he heard Ochan rasping.

“Hold your tongue,” came Urik’s sharp, agitated voice.

Ammen Sharp could not resist the temptation to poke his head around the edge of his sheltering crate. To his horror, he saw his father facing half a dozen men, the squat shape of Urik the Wardcaptain to the fore. They all carried the iron-banded cudgels of the Guard; three of them held torches, the flames stretching out and crackling in the wind from the open door. Wild shadows spun crazily around the warehouse.

“I’ll hold your tongue for you, if you come any closer,” Ochan said, and Ammen clearly heard the danger, the threat in the words.

“Be still,” cried Urik, raising his cudgel.

He sounded almost frantic to Ammen, on the verge of panic. This could not be what the Wardcaptain had wanted. He was surely too afraid of his own corruption being exposed to willingly allow Ochan to be cornered like this. Something must have gone wrong, Ammen thought as a cold, fearful anticipation ran through him.

“You’ve been followed half the day, Ochan Lyre,” Urik was saying. “Don’t think you can escape now.”

“Escape? Escape?” Ochan’s voice was rising, his anger with it. “And do they know about you, these thugs you’ve brought with you? Do they know-”

Urik howled and rushed forwards. Ochan was fast, though. He snapped the tip of his quarterstaff down and landed it square on Urik’s forehead, sending the stocky little man staggering. Had it only been the two of them there in the warehouse, there would have been no doubt about the victor. But Urik was not alone. The other Guardsmen closed in on Ochan at once, cudgels flailing.

A cry lodged frozen in Ammen’s throat as he watched the blows rain down. He wanted to leap out of his hiding place and fly to his father’s aid, but his legs were locked as if his knees had rusted in place.

Ochan had gone down on his hands and knees. Urik stamped up to him, blood running in rivulets down his face.

“You bled me!” the Wardcaptain screeched. “You bled me!”

He hit Ochan once, hard, on the back of his head with his heavy iron-clad club. Ammen saw his father fall to the ground and knew in that instant, from the leaden slackness of his limbs, the wet limpness with which his head smacked onto the stone, that Ochan the Cook was dead.

The other Guardsmen restrained Urik, who was still shouting furiously. Ammen shrank back, trembling, into his little dark corner. He closed his eyes, held his hands to his face, pressing down on his mouth and the moans that were rising towards it. Lights were dancing inside his eyelids.

“Drag the body out,” he heard someone say far, far away. “We’ll get a wagon to take it.”

And then, soon, they were gone and the door had closed behind them. And Ammen Sharp was alone with the dark, and his horror.

VII

“Aewult will not be happy when Taim marches,” Lheanor oc Kilkry-Haig was saying softly. The Thane seldom spoke loudly these days. He sat in a capacious high-backed chair. He did not fill it as Orisian guessed he might once have done. Lheanor was hunched forwards a little, hands laid across one another in his lap, shoulders pinched in.

“No,” Orisian acknowledged. “He might not. I don’t want to cause trouble for you, but I may leave some behind me.”

Lheanor’s right hand stirred, the fingers fluttering as if to dismiss such a minor concern.

“A little more trouble will make no difference when there’s so much of it already in the air. We’ve been told no Kilkry spears will be needed in the coming battles either, you know. Aewult wants our men scattered, sent home, even the ones Roaric brought back from the south. My son’s… unhappy.

“And to bind the wound with salted bandages, I am requested – requested, mark you – to help in defraying the costs of this war, and that against Igryn. It’s not the Chancellor himself who asks, of course. One of his scribblers, his counters, comes quietly and does the asking for him.” Lheanor shook his head. “They’ll not come knocking on the door of your treasury yet, Orisian. Not until you’re back in Anduran. But knock they will, and stretch their greedy hands out.”

“You’ll give them what they want?” Orisian asked.

“Oh, yes. I bent the knee to the Haig Blood, as has every Thane of my line since Cannoch. And what’s the value of an oath if we set it aside when the fulfilment of it becomes onerous, painful? The only other choice would, sooner or later, be war with Haig, and with Ayth and Taral. That way lies chaos: the very thing the Bloods were made to end. Anyway, it’s not a war we could win.”

The Kilkry Thane leaned sideways in his throne, looking past Orisian to the ranks of his shieldmen arrayed along the far wall. Rothe was there too, standing tall and alert despite his still-bandaged arm.

“Let us walk in the gardens,” Lheanor said as he rose, heavily, from his chair. “I find it does not help my mood to sit still for too long.”

They went out into the chill air. Their guards followed behind, out of earshot but close. Orisian thought Lheanor would be cold, but the old man gave no sign of discomfort, as if the state of the world around him could no longer impinge on his thoughts. They set out along one of the garden’s broad paths, curving away around the side of the hillock that supported the Tower.

“You’re going to Highfast, then?” Lheanor said.

“Yes. I’ve seen – and heard – enough to make me think… I’m not sure. Perhaps armies are not the only kind of strength we need in this. But I’ll stay there only briefly. I mean to meet Taim Narran at Kolglas. I’m told there’s a good path from Highfast across the Peaks to Hent and then down to the coast.”

“Good? I don’t know. Passable, yes, if you don’t wait too long, and if you’ve no wagons to haul. The Karkyre Peaks can be nasty in the winter.” Lheanor flicked a glance at the sky. “Not quite yet, though, I suppose.”

“What did you make of the word Bannain brought from Highfast? About Aeglyss, the Shared?” Orisian felt like a charlatan, pretending to discuss weighty matters with the Thane of a True Blood. He wondered if he would ever feel as though he belonged at the side of such a man.

Lheanor shrugged. “I worry about grain harvests, about tithes, about the Shadowhand’s games. The worries of na’kyrim… well, some problems are best left to others. How can the likes of you and I oppose things that cannot be met with a blade, or an emissary, or cold coin? Don’t mistake me, though: Cerys and her people at Highfast, they’re a precious thing. Giving that place to the na’kyrim was not the least of Kulkain’s wise deeds, not by a long way.”

“Have you said anything about it – Bannain’s message – to Aewult?”

“Ha! You really think the great warriors of Haig would care what a few na’kyrim think? Aewult would not listen to any counsel drawn from such a well. It would only feed his contempt for us, to learn that we gave it any credence ourselves. We have a few slender threads of tolerance left for the children of two races, your Blood and mine. But Haig? No. Even if they believed it… oh, there are old hatreds that could easily be stirred back into life. If people start to think there are na’kyrim mixed up in this war, how safe do you suppose any of them, anywhere, would be?”

“They took a risk, in sending Bannain to you,” Orisian murmured.

“I like to think they trust me, as they have trusted my ancestors. Unfortunately, I fear they do not really understand how much power has leaked away from the Tower of Thrones.”