It left Anyara with a prodigious store of irritation and frustration, like a vat so full of vinegar that the acrid liquid trembled at the very lip, poised to spill forth at only the slightest nudge. Had Mordyn Jerain not arrived when he did, Aewult nan Haig might have been drenched. After the Chancellor and Bloodheir departed, she tried to return to her discussions with Ilessa oc Kilkry-Haig but found herself distracted by angry thoughts. The Thane’s wife was understanding.

“Go,” she said. “Take a walk in the gardens. The mind works poorly when the heart is so unsettled.”

So Anyara followed Coinach down the long spiral staircase, and watched his shoulders, and his short, coarse hair. He fitted her image of what a young warrior should be like. She hoped, and assumed, that she would never have cause to discover whether his abilities matched that image.

A few steps out into the open air were enough to tell Anyara that the weather was not all it might have been. Desultory sleet had begun to fall, gobbets of slushy ice spitting down. She glanced up at the cloud-filled sky.

“Not fit for a stroll, really,” she muttered.

“No,” Coinach agreed.

Anyara sighed. She hated the idea of sitting around. Bitter experience had long ago taught her that inactivity only undermined her defences. Movement, occupation: these were the things that kept her beyond the reach of the past and of memories.

“You’ve orders to teach me how to fight, haven’t you?” she asked Coinach.

“Yes, lady.” The flicker of unease in his expression was tiny and faint, but Anyara noticed it. She let it pass.

“Let’s begin that, then. So long as we can find somewhere sheltered.”

“The barracks, lady. They have the training blades we would need there, too.”

“Wooden?” she said with a trace of scorn. Coinach looked uncomfortable, perhaps even fearful of her displeasure, but he said nothing. There was an appealing boyishness about his expression, Anyara thought. He was, she reminded herself, not much older than her.

“Very well. Come, we can get rain capes from the guardroom. They keep them there for such moments.”

The little room had been hollowed out of the thick wall of the Tower. Its walls were bare stone, and their smooth, hard surfaces were inflating the noise of the argument Anyara found in progress. A single guard, who obviously wished with all his heart that he was elsewhere, stood in the corner making a determined effort to go unnoticed. A maid, her cheek glowing from the aftermath of some recent blow, tears on her face, rushed out even as Anyara entered. The girl – who could not be more than fifteen or sixteen – brushed past, barely even noticing Anyara, and ran for the main stairway.

Ishbel, Aewult nan Haig’s notorious companion, stood in the centre of the guardroom. She was shouting after the fleeing maidservant.

“The red one! With the black hood! The one you should have brought in the first place!”

She glanced at Anyara. Their eyes met for a moment, but Ishbel seemed not to recognise Anyara – or not to care. Her gaze snapped aside, still pursuing the maid.

“You’ll not make me wear these rags!” Ishbel cried out.

“You struck the girl?” Anyara enquired softly.

That was enough to hold Ishbel’s attention. She was truly beautiful, Anyara thought: flawless skin, sleek dark hair. Perfect, full cheeks that were suffused with a rosy blush of anger.

“She forgot my cape,” Ishbel snapped. “Then thinks I should wear one of those.” She gestured at the plain rain capes that hung on one wall of the guardroom. “Look at them!”

Anyara did as she was bid. “They seem fit for their purpose to me. I was seeking one myself.” She smiled at the other woman, and not out of affection or politeness.

Ishbel glared at her. Anyara thought there was a moment of doubt, perhaps recognition, in there. Perhaps she knows who I am now, she thought.

“Not good enough for you?” she asked Ishbel sweetly. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed the guard hang his head and shrink still further back into the corner.

“I didn’t come all this way to wander around this miserable city in the rain dressed like a fisherwoman.”

“Oh. Why did you come all this way? To strike your servants? Or just to keep the Bloodheir’s bed warm?” She heard Coinach groan behind her, and saw Ishbel open her mouth to respond. “I was always taught that the only people who struck their servants were those who deserved worse themselves,” she said before either of them could interrupt her.

Such a twist of anger then disfigured Ishbel’s fair face that Anyara imagined for a moment that she was about to be struck herself. She knew it was foolish – a thought that did not become the sister of a Thane – but she almost relished the prospect: it would, at least, offer a release for her caged frustrations. Surely no one could object if she struck back? Instead, Ishbel’s face settled back into an expression of studied contempt.

“And I was taught that it’s best to keep your nose out other people’s affairs,” she snapped.

Coinach pushed in front of Anyara, nodding almost respectfully to Ishbel. He took one of the capes down from its hook.

“We have what we came for,” he said to Anyara as he settled the cape on her shoulders and gently – so gently that it was little more than a suggestion in his hands – sought to turn her away. “It might be best to be on our way before the weather worsens.”

Anyara allowed herself to be ushered out into the sleet. She paused outside the Tower, adjusting the cape and pulling up its hood.

“I didn’t know it was a shieldman’s task to guard me from the likes of her,” she muttered.

“From whatever harm may threaten, I think, lady,” the warrior said. “Whether self-inflicted or otherwise.”

She tugged aside the edge of her hood in order to frown at him, but he was looking up at the sky.

“May even turn to snow soon,” he mused. “Best to get down to the barracks.”

He said it with an air of such casual observation that her irritation faded. It would not, after all, have been wise to stand there trading ever more barbed insults with Aewult’s lover. The Haig Blood hardly needed more reasons to dislike her own.

“Come, then,” she said as she set off down the path that curled away through the bleak gardens. “What will you be teaching me today?”

“We should start with the knife, I imagine. Always easy to carry a knife somewhere about you.”

“A knife? That’ll not help me much if some White Owl’s trying to stick me with a spear, or some Inkallim’s chopping me up with a sword.”

She thought she heard Coinach sigh then. It was a faint, resigned sound. It made her smile, and she almost reached out to pat him encouragingly on the back.

“We’ll make it a big knife, lady,” he said. “The biggest we can find.”

III

Urik the Wardcaptain was drunk when Ammen Sharp killed him. Falling-down, stupid drunk. Ammen would have made the attempt anyway, for he had no reserves of patience to draw upon, no caution left to soften his urgent hunger for revenge. That luck should so smile on him as to lead Urik into a tavern and keep him there long enough to render him defenceless only made Ammen more certain of the rightness of his course.

He had followed the Wardcaptain from the Guard House of Kolkyre’s Harbour ward. The foulness of Urik’s mood had been obvious from the first moment he stamped out into the evening. His path to the nearby tavern had been direct and determined. It was easy for Ammen to follow undetected. Sprawled flat on the roof, staring down at the door from which he expected his quarry to emerge, he had allowed himself to wonder briefly just how much trouble the Wardcaptain of the Guard was already in. His distress, his pressing need to drown it with ale, suggested that the bribes Urik had taken from Ammen’s father had come to light, or were about to do so. Perhaps the Guard itself was close to turning on him; to sending him to the headtaker. In the end it mattered not at all, since Ammen Sharp meant to save them the trouble.