IV

“I heard you had a disagreement with Aewult’s whore.” Roaric nan Kilkry-Haig had an unpleasant, bitter smile on his face as he spoke.

Anyara avoided his gaze. “I thought she was a singer or something,” she said.

“A dancer, once upon a time I think. Still, she loves his wealth, his glory, not him,” Roaric said with a shrug. “Makes her something of a whore, doesn’t it?”

Lheanor’s son made Anyara uncomfortable. He meant well, she knew. He thought himself a friend and ally of her Blood, and no doubt she could trust him in that. His anger was so raw, though, his character so veined with hostility, that it coloured his every conversation. Anyara suspected that what she saw in him was a distorted reflection of herself as she might have been, had she not learned to hold back bitterness and sorrow by strength of will. She found it ugly.

They rode together down towards the harbour. Coinach was, as always now, at Anyara’s side. Roaric’s Shield boasted half a dozen burly members, and they had taken the lead, barging a path through the crowds of Sea Street. A sealer’s boat had arrived that morning, carrying sick and exhausted survivors of the fall of Glasbridge. Their own flimsy vessel had been driven ashore on Il Anaron’s bleak northern coastline, after drifting, without stores of food or water, for a long time. Roaric meant to see to their care himself, and had invited Anyara to come with him.

“Anyway, I was pleased to hear you had put her in her place,” the Bloodheir continued. “She imagines herself untouchable merely because she shares Aewult’s bed. As if such things counted for anything here. She’d do well to learn a little discretion.”

“I was told Aewult is leaving, in any case,” said Anyara. She had no wish to dwell on her encounter with Ishbel. Even the memory of it made her angry, at both Ishbel and herself. It had been an act of weakness to so deliberately pick an argument with the woman.

“It’s true,” Roaric said, and his pleasure was obvious. “The advance companies of his army have already marched. He’s out at the camp himself, trying to herd the rest into some kind of order. I’ve not seen such a mess of an army in a long time. At least Gryvan knows how to command a host. He didn’t see fit to share that wisdom with his heir, apparently.”

“I don’t envy Taim Narran, when Aewult catches up with him.”

Roaric laughed. “Oh, he can look after himself, your Captain. I’d count myself lucky if I was half the man Taim is. If it’s true, as I heard, that the Shadowhand has gone off on the trail of your brother, it’s him you should be concerned for.”

“Orisian can take care of himself as well,” Anyara said, hoping it was true. The news that Mordyn Jerain had left at dawn, taking only a small company with him up the old Kyre road, had taken everyone by surprise. In truth, she suspected that Orisian would be distinctly unsettled should the Shadowhand catch up with him. “Some of my brother’s companions would probably enjoy the opportunity to tell the Chancellor a thing or two, anyway.”

The Bloodheir looked at her questioningly, and Anyara smiled.

“Yvane. I don’t think you’ve met her.”

Sea Street was broader and longer than any thoroughfare Anyara knew from the Glas valley. There were several grand houses – the homes of rich merchants and Craftsmen, she guessed – but much of its length was lined by shops and yards and stables. Though the day was cold and the air damp, the street was busy. She might be imagining it, but Anyara thought she could detect a certain boisterousness about the crowds that she had not seen before. Nobody here would mourn the departure of the Haig army. One of the Tower’s maids had whispered to her as she prepared to ride out that, only last night, a Taral-Haig spearman who had got drunk in the wrong tavern had been badly beaten. He was found in an alleyway, battered, bruised and stripped naked. The maid had been simmering with excitement as she recounted the rumour.

The quayside itself was, if anything, even busier than Sea Street. Seagulls swept in tight circles above, at least as noisy as the humans below. Anyara had never seen so many vessels: the whole length of the waterfront was lined with everything from fat cargo ships to tiny rowboats. Life and trade continued here in all their variety, no matter what shadows threatened. The crowds were such that people pressed close to the horses. Anyara could sense how uneasy Coinach was becoming. If he was ashamed to have been given the task of standing as shieldman to a woman, it did not show. He was, Anyara was coming to recognise, almost obsessively alert to the slightest hint – invariably imagined, as far as she was concerned – of threat to her.

“The harbour master’s taken your cast-ashores into his own house,” Roaric told her. “They can’t stay there, though. He doesn’t have the space.”

Anyara remembered that house from when she had arrived here with Orisian and the others: the first real warmth and welcome they had experienced since the night of Winterbirth.

“You can almost smell the relief that we’re to see the back of Aewult and his army, can’t you?” said Roaric, gazing out over the lively crowds. “The news has gone around the city faster than a plague of sneezes.”

“It’s good to see more happy faces,” Anyara agreed. “I don’t look forward to Aewult’s return, though. It seems unlikely that he’ll be any more pleasant once he’s got a victory behind him.”

“Oh, I don’t think we’ll see much of him after the fighting’s done. He hates it here. He hates us. Even his desire to gloat, and to grind our faces into the dirt of his triumph, won’t be enough to keep him here. That’ll be a still happier day for us all, when we’re watching his back disappear off down the road to Vaymouth.”

“He’ll be High Thane one day,” Anyara said distantly. “My brother’s master.”

“Perhaps the Black Road will do us a favour and kill him,” Roaric said with a grim smile. “Failing that, we can only wish his father a long life. And that’s not something I’ve said before.”

The people the harbour master had taken into his house were desperate folk: destitute, hungry, half of them sick. Anyara listened to their tales, and offered what comfort she could. She felt more anger than pity. Glasbridge had been a fine town, prosperous and bustling. The Black Road had ruined it, and all of the lives that centred upon it, just as they had ruined so much else. In seeing these shattered people, Anyara saw afresh all the loss and suffering that had been inflicted on her Blood; it was embodied in their thin frames, in their fearful, exhausted faces.

She did not stay long. She promised them that they would be helped, and fed, and have the attention of healers. Roaric assured her they would be given shelter in Kolkyre’s northern quarter, where so many Lannis folk had already congregated. And then she left, taking her anger and distress away lest it should show itself too clearly. It would not help these people, she thought, to see that the sister of their Thane was just as helplessly distraught as they were.

Coinach escorted her back along the harbour and up Sea Street. The Tower of Thrones stood ahead of them, like the last pillar of some immense edifice long ago crumbled away.

“I’d hate to have to live all my life in a place like that,” Anyara said.

Coinach looked up at the soaring tower, but said nothing.

“It’s too old, too… unlike everything else,” Anyara went on. “It feels cold to me.”

“You miss your own home,” Coinach said, turning his attention back to the crowds filling the street. “There’s nothing strange in that.”

“I do miss it. I don’t know how much of a home it’ll be when I return, though. The castle burned. My father – half the people I knew – won’t be there any more. Where’s your home?”

“Now? I don’t know. Wherever you go, my lady. I’m your shieldman.”