The Thane paced back and forth, his arms swinging. Ilessa was hanging her head. Anyara wondered whether Roaric truly could not see how drained, how much in need of gentleness, his mother was. Perhaps not. She understood a little of how he felt. Blind rage was not a wholly unreasonable response to much of what had happened.

“All right,” Roaric said. He gave every appearance of talking to himself now, of voicing the struggle between his warring instincts. “All right. We’ll find an accommodation with them in this. We’ll show enough obedience to keep the Steward happy. I’ll not have one man punished for those deaths, though. Not one. And I will have my army back. I don’t care what Aewult nan Haig thinks, he can’t tell me, in my own lands, what to do with my own warriors. I’ll send messengers tonight. The Steward won’t be so sure of himself if we’ve five thousand swords gathered within the city walls.”

The Thane stalked out with only the most cursory of glances at his mother.

“You will have to forgive him,” Ilessa said. “This is hard for him.”

She went slowly, hunchbacked, fragile, to the chair that her son had vacated. As she sank down into it, she closed her eyes. Anyara watched her exhaustion and grief take hold of her.

“It is hard for all of us,” Anyara said. “You need rest, I should think.”

“Oh, yes. I do need rest. I need to sleep. But when I do, I dream of grief. I miss my husband very much.”

“Yes,” Anyara murmured. She had no idea what she could, or should, say. Ilessa deserved comfort, she deserved kind words and more. Nobody, Anyara was beginning to think, received what they truly deserved. “I didn’t know him well, but… he was a kind man, I thought. Good.”

“He was good,” Ilessa said. She nodded, her eyes still closed, a weary frown still across her brow. “He often said that there were too few good men left in the world. One less, now. And the world much darker to my eyes.”

Anyara began to back away, edging towards the door. She felt guilty at her inability to offer this woman any succour, though such profound, private sorrow was, in her experience, not often salved by the sympathy of others anyway. Ilessa summoned up a rueful smile from somewhere.

“We’re all to suffer loss this winter, it seems. All to take on our own burdens. You carry yours well, Anyara. Your father, your uncle, would be proud of you, and of your brother. I am sorry to draw you into the sorrows of my family as well. You deserve better, but.. . I do need help. My son does.”

“I’ll give you whatever help I can,” Anyara said sincerely. “I don’t know what it is you think I can do, though.”

Ilessa rose to her feet. She had recovered some of her poise.

“Roaric is young. He has been Bloodheir for only a few weeks; Thane for just days. It will take time for him to… he makes everything a personal matter. Always has done. Any blows against our Blood, against our honour or pride, he feels landing on his own back. Every failure or shortcoming that he perceives in himself, he makes into a crisis fit to convulse nations. Your presence alone will help. Anything will, that reminds him there are others – your Blood, not least – with much to lose if he mis-steps.

“His father… Lheanor spent half his life restraining himself, submitting himself and our Blood to slights and petty humiliations. He did it to preserve the peace. It cost him a great deal of his pride, and of his strength. He missed the young, fearless man he had once been. Oh, you should have seen him when he was young. He thought himself reduced by time, but I loved him just the same, and never thought the less of him. He served his people better than they know.”

Ilessa sighed. She regarded the worn surface of the table thoughtfully, brushing it with her fingertips as if it was spread with some fine, soft material.

“Is it true that you saw the Haig men killed?” she asked Anyara quietly.

Anyara nodded. “It was not… pleasant.”

“I am sure. Times like these bring savagery closer to the surface. I think perhaps men like Aewult, like my son, do not fear it, or hate it, quite enough. Perhaps, if they are given the time to do so, people will remember the value of the peace that our forefathers built. Perhaps they will understand the sacrifices that are needed to sustain it.”

The pervasive tension of Kolkyre wore Anyara down. Like a ramifying spider’s web, it seemed to have infiltrated every alleyway and courtyard. She tired of it, and when she woke to find a rare morning of vast, cloudless skies and still, clean air, she took Coinach and half a dozen other Lannis men and rode out into the low hills east of the city. She wanted some open ground beneath her, some movement.

The land here was rich and fertile. The gentle dips and slopes of the rolling hills were swathed in grass that even at this time of year had a lushness to it. Her horse stretched its legs, as if it too had tired of the narrow horizons of stables and city streets. She let it run, and the rush of cold air across her face filled her with a fierce exuberance. The speed was almost enough to make her think that she could outpace all the woes of the world, that peace lay only just beyond the next rise.

Her horse pounded across a slope. The thudding of its hoofs in the soft earth was a drumbeat to match her exhilarated heart. A flock of little birds burst up from the grass ahead, and horse and rider chased them, almost as if one more bound might bear them up into the great sky. Anyara heard herself laughing, the sound tumbling away in her wake, spilling back over her shoulders. Freedom and forgetfulness were just there, just ahead: a few more strides, one more surge of effort from the great animal beneath her, and she would be free.

The shouts of her escort drew her back. That sense of weightlessness was gone and she was pressed into her saddle, hauling at the reins to slow her mount. Coinach drew level with her. He was flushed, his cheeks red.

“You must be careful, lady,” he said a little more loudly than Anyara thought was necessary. “There could be holes for the horse to trip in, a hidden ditch.”

She grinned at him. “You are an old woman, Coinach. I suspected as much. Doesn’t this lift your spirits? Don’t you feel better for some clean air? It’s put a fine blush on your cheeks.”

The shieldman half-raised a gloved hand to his face in surprise, but snatched it back down again. Anyara laughed again and nudged her horse on, turning up the slope.

“Look,” she said, “we’ll go to that barn up there, see what’s over the rise. We can rest then, if you like.”

The building was empty, though in good order. The lands around Kolkyre had been feeding fine horses and sheep and cattle for centuries, making their owners wealthy, their Thanes powerful.

Anyara dismounted in the lee of the barn and tousled her horse’s mane.

“Thank you for that,” she whispered in its ear.

Coinach had a couple of the other warriors quickly search the barn, and did not descend from his own mount’s back until he was assured that they were alone on this lofty ridge. He brought some bread and cheese and a flask of wine to Anyara.

She sat on the edge of a stone watering trough and ate. The view was not as dramatic as some she had seen – in the high Car Criagar or even from the rocking deck of the Tal Dyreen ship – but it felt amply vast enough for her today. The waters of Anaron’s Bay were a soft grey mass beyond Kolkyre. They looked calm and peaceful. The grassy humps and hollows that rolled down towards the coast were gentle, tamed. Even the farmhouses and barns and stables scattered across the landscape had, in her eyes, a solid, safe look to them.

“I never really knew that Kilkry had such rich grazing lands,” she reflected.

Coinach, loitering nearby, took a step closer.