“No.” Tara hesitated, then decided to venture onto trickier ground. “Extraordinary, don’t you think, the way they managed to reach old Lheanor? Right there, at a feast in his own Tower, by all accounts. I heard the woman even poisoned half the kitchen staff, to get herself next to the Thane.”

Abeh wrinkled her nose in distaste, and gave a little sniff. Talk of death, talk of anything of any consequence, would only spoil her immersion in this lively, light day. But Tara knew that Abeh, Gryvan, all of them, had been shaken by Lheanor’s death. No one had thought the Black Road could hide so deeply, and for so long, so close to the heart of a Blood. As soon as the grim story reached Vaymouth, purges amongst the staff of every palace in the city had begun. Maids and cooks and grooms who had given good service for years had been turned out onto the street, or worse, for want of a convincing answer to some question, or a suitably loyal, submissive expression on their face.

What Tara feared was not betrayal within the walls of her own palace, though. No, what left her feeling as if she lived now beneath a constant shadow was the knowledge that her husband was there, in the north where Thanes were dying, and traitors were lurking. To lose Mordyn would be more than she could bear. It would be to lose the best reason she had – had ever had – to wake in the morning. And there was nothing she could do to ensure his safe return; only wait, and hope, and dream of the day when this fear would be lifted and he would be with her again.

“They’re almost there,” cried Abeh in a burst of excitement.

Way out across the river, the pale shapes of the swimmers were just visible, labouring through waves. It made Tara think of debris, on the sea. They were almost at the far bank. It was impossible to say who was in the lead, but to judge by the cheers rising from the small crowd gathered over there it was a close race this year. The wind had strengthened and was peeling spray off the crests of the waves, blasting it downriver. The bobbing, multicoloured heads of the swimmers came and went, obscured and revealed. Even the rowers in the longboat that waited to bring the winner back and present him to the High Thane, so that he could kneel and have the Plate pressed into his hands, and hear the adulation of the masses, even those rowers and steersmen were on their feet, shouting encouragement. And all Tara Jerain could think was, Oh, what does it matter? Don’t you know that more important things than this are happening? Darker things. Things that could yet put cracks into this bright, glittering, empty delight.

V

He breathed, and the air was rough and jagged in his throat. He blinked, and the light sent splinters of pain back into the hollow cavity of his skull. He lifted a hand, and his arm felt distant, as if it belonged to someone else. Mordyn Jerain, the Shadowhand, came slowly back to himself.

There was a pillow under his head, a coarse linen sheet beneath his fingertips. He could hear someone moving, soft shoes on stone. His eyes no longer wanted to open. His head ached.

“I am thirsty,” he managed to say.

“Wain, pour some water from that jug,” someone – a man – said, in a voice so smooth, so richly contoured that it made Mordyn think of flowing honey.

He tried, and failed, to part his eyelids.

“Let me help you,” came that voice again. “You must sit up if you’re to drink.”

Then there were hands on his arm and shoulder, lifting him. Someone moved the pillow so that he could rest against it. The pain in his skull was unremitting.

“Where am I?” he asked. “Highfast?”

And there was laughter at that. The voice previously so unctuous and rich became strained, agitated.

“Highfast? No, it’s not Highfast. Not at all.” A finger pushed at Mordyn’s eyelid, lifting it. In the flare of harsh light, he glimpsed pale skin, a long and bony hand. “You’d know that soon enough if you’d open your eyes and look around.”

From the other side of the bed someone else was putting a beaker into his hand. He raised it and forced down a mouthful or two of water.

“You’ll damage him if you’re rough,” a woman said. The words might have implied compassion or rebuke; the voice that carried that was so emotionless, though, that they did neither. It was a cold statement of fact.

The man snorted. “He’s well enough. They mended his skull.”

Mordyn blinked again. He had to force his eyes to open against the intrusive, painful light. Tears formed as he winced and looked around him. The first thing he saw, the thing that snagged and held his attention, was the na’kyrim staring back at him. The man looked sick. The skin of his face was blotched and bruised, the shape and line of the underlying bones starkly visible. He watched Mordyn with an eager hunger that would have made the Shadowhand recoil had he possessed the strength to move.

“Welcome back,” the na’kyrim said, and he smiled in a way that put Mordyn in mind of the half-mad diseased beggars of the Ash Pit in Vaymouth.

The woman took the beaker from Mordyn’s hand and refilled it. He turned his head to follow her. She was impressive: sleek hair, an erect and powerful posture. There were rings on her fingers, and hundreds of others – of a more functional kind – in the vest of metal she wore over a padded shirt. The Shadowhand’s mind was sluggish, as if numbed by the pain in his head. He had to concentrate to string thoughts together. The woman was strong, and armoured. Her voice – what little he had heard of it – wore an accent he could not attach to any of the lands of the True Bloods. Improbable as it seemed, then, could she be of the Black Road?

“Anduran?” he murmured, turning back to the na’kyrim. “Is this Anduran?”

“No.” That pale, gaunt head shook. The na’kyrim straightened. He flicked one of his thin fingers at the wall. “This is older stone. Nothing of Sirian’s making.”

The woman returned the over-full beaker to Mordyn. His hand was unsteady. He spilled water on his chest as he drank.

“You are in Kan Avor,” she said. “I am Wain nan Horin-Gyre.”

Sister to Kanin, Mordyn thought at once. The Horin Blood sent its best, then, to fight this war. There could be no worse company for the Chancellor of the Haig Bloods to find himself in. He had no idea how he could have come into such an absurd situation. He remembered… a stone road, amidst stone mountains, and nothing thereafter. Could this all be just a feverish dream, tormenting his mind while his body lay in some distant, safe bed?

The na’kyrim was leaning over him again, smiling, regarding Mordyn with carnivorous glee. His face was so close that Mordyn shrank away from it, repulsed by the marbling of blood vessels and bruises.

“She is Wain, Chancellor, and I am Aeglyss.” He laid the tips of his white fingernails on Mordyn’s cheek, and the Shadowhand found the muscles in his jaw taut, his teeth grinding together. Tremors ran across his brow and scalp, like maggots swarming under his skin. “Remember my name, Chancellor. You will come to know it well, for we’ve a great deal to talk about, you and I.”

Mordyn felt sweat on his brow as Aeglyss backed away. A rootless fear was roaring in his mind, a wind bursting open shutters and bullying its way around the room of his skull. The beaker of water fell from his fingers, soaking the sheet over his stomach and hip. He had to clench his hands into knots to prevent them from shaking. Something in this halfbreed undermined all the precious self-control and clarity that Mordyn so valued. Desperate for something to hold on to, he looked back to Wain nan Horin-Gyre.

“I can speak for Gryvan oc Haig,” he said, almost ashamed at the strain in his voice. “I will gladly talk with you and your brother; not this other, this na’kyrim. I don’t know how he comes to be serving you, but he has no place amongst the councils of the great.”