The Hollow Queen, Page 3

  “Many of them—the metallics mostly.”

  “Good. Wake up that tanner and tell him to bring me color samples of everything he has available in the colors of the stones.”

  Gwydion nodded again, rose, and left the room for a moment, returning forthwith.

  “A deliveryman will be here shortly with the samples, sire.”

  Achmed went to the coatrack where his cloak hung, and pulled it from the hook with a sweep. He crossed the room quickly and laid the garment in Gwydion’s arms.

  “This tanner—I assume he has an assistant? Staff?”

  The young duke nodded. “Actually, the tanner is a woman, and extraordinarily gifted. She has a full staff of cutters, assemblymen, beamers, embroidery men, swabbers, buffers, and bucktailors. While my knowledge of geology is minimal, my father saw to it that I understood leathermaking from an early age, as it is one of the major industries of my province.”

  “Good. Then please identify the most trustworthy of them, and command them to prepare for an evening shift stretching into night. Take the cloak and have them pattern it to one and a half times its current size. Hooded, with an internally seamed tie.”

  “Should I send for more food, then?” Gwydion asked humorously, trying to compensate for his sweating hands. “It sounds like you are looking to double your size.”

  “Clearly not, or I would have asked that the pattern be twice the current cloak, not half again. It is very important that the leather also be as water-resistant as it is possible to make it. The workmanship should be judged by its solidity, not its appearance, except for its color. I’m not looking for pretty work, just strong—and in the right colors. As soon as the samples get here, I’ll make selections and they can get started at once. I will need two cloaks, to be finished no later than two hours past midnight. And be certain, once again, that you choose only those workmen whose silence can be trusted.”

  “It will be done.”

  Achmed nodded, satisfied. “Thank you. And while that is being undertaken, because even the best-laid plans sometimes go awry, I will tell you the story of MacQuieth’s Wings. Just in case.”

  “Just in case what?”

  “Do you have any more of that brandy?”

  “Absolutely. I’ll ring for the chamberlain.”

  “Leave him to bed. He is a dolt, a poor replacement for Gerald Owen. What happened to him, by the way?”

  “Gerald?” Gwydion asked. “He died in his sleep, actually, while I was in battle north of Sepulvarta. His heart gave out, I imagine, though it was so big and strong it’s hard to believe. He was an elderly man, of course, having devoted so much of his life to three generations of our family. I miss him terribly. I am grateful that Melly is not here; he was the one constant in her life. I’m glad to be able to spare her the pain of his loss for a short time, anyway.”

  “Hmmm,” the Bolg king said noncommittally. “I hope that was the case.”

  “You’ve reason to doubt that it was?” The young duke went suddenly cold.

  “I always doubt that convenient natural death is natural. There’s nothing you can do about it now, so if I were you I would not spend too much time contemplating that possibility. Now, if you would kindly attend to what I’ve asked of you with the leather mistress—”

  Gwydion was already on his way out the door.

  5

  When the duke of Navarne returned sometime later, another glass of the cordial in his hand, Achmed had already returned each of the documents he had read to the shelves and drawers of Ashe’s library and was sitting on one of the settees in front of the fire, lost in thought.

  Silently, Gwydion handed him the drink.

  “Do you remember the bay gelding I had delivered to you two years back?” The Bolg king’s voice was full of memory.

  “Of course.” Gwydion sat down on the other settee and glanced at the fire. It was burning low, almost to the stage of coals.

  “Have you looked in on him as I asked of you?”

  “Not recently,” Gwydion admitted. “I did so regularly before I went into battle.”

  Achmed nodded. “And I assume he is still stabled separately from all but your elite bloods?”

  “Yes, of course. Just as you asked. I admit his presence has always been strange to me; a horse of that caliber, groomed meticulously and exercised regularly, but never ridden formally or called in to any use.”

  “He is one of MacQuieth’s Wings,” the Bolg king said, still staring into the fire himself.

  “MacQuieth’s Wings?”

  It took a long time for the Bolg king to speak again. When he did, his voice was dry and soft.

  “In the old world, the hero named MacQuieth was known for many skills, but the one I was able to assess and figure out was his ability to fly.”

  “Fly?”

  “It was believed that he actually could, because he seemed to be able to pass through great distances in befuddlingly short amounts of time. It was really quite extraordinary; he could traverse the island of Serendair, which was almost half the size of the Middle Continent, in little more than three days.”

  “Three days? That seems all but impossible. No wonder it was believed that he could fly.”

  “At least some of his remarkable speed was due to a carefully built and maintained network of outstanding horseflesh, quartered in secret at various points across the island. MacQuieth knew the terrain of Serendair better than all but the most accomplished of foresters, and his brain was uniquely mathematical. He was able to synthesize the logistics of time and distance with an understanding of the lay of the land.

  “He had determined a route of hubs that allowed him to travel not as the crow flies, obviously, but very close to it in terms of its efficiency and speed. I have to admit that, while no one would think to accuse me of being a fanciful man, I was secretly disappointed to discover the reality of MacQuieth’s Wings. But that was a long time ago, long before I was named king and had a population to guard, a realm to protect. Now I am grateful for the knowledge of that ancient hero’s system, which I’ve duplicated as best as I could in this new world. It took me less than a sennight to arrive here from Ylorc, in spite of the fact that the regular journey along the trade route is a fortnight and a half in good weather and conditions.”

  “Remarkable.”

  “Not really,” said Achmed. “It is merely good planning. Good planning usually pays off, though not always, of course. It is in those times when it doesn’t that I am most aware of how vulnerable we all are in the world. The best you can do after the last plan is carefully laid is to lay your wager well, and be ready for the time your card doesn’t come up when the deck is cut.”

  He rose slowly and stretched his body meticulously, like a patient cat.

  “Now, if you will be so kind, I would like to see that guest room you promised me for the night. Wake me the moment the cloaks are done.”

  “I will,” said Gwydion. “I shall await their completion and bring them to you myself.” He stood and rang for the chamberlain.

  “Thank you. Remember—no later than two hours past midnight. I need to be gone beyond the sight of anyone at Highmeadow before First-light.”

  “Sleep well.” Gwydion hesitated, then blurted out the question he had pondered for hours.

  “Er—Tristan Steward?”

  Achmed turned and looked at him coolly. “Yes?”

  “What—what should I tell Lady Madeleine? His wife?”

  “I would leave that to your godfather when he gets back,” Achmed said. “He’s a much better liar than you are. And if he doesn’t come back and you judge intervention to be necessary, I would tell her that he died bravely serving the Alliance. All those Cyrmians wouldn’t recognize the truth anyway.”

  He turned again and followed the nervous Manus out the door.

  OVER THE NORTHERN BORDER, STEPPES OF SORBOLD

  Dranth was dreaming, something he could not remember having done in so long that it was as if it were the fi
rst time.

  He was wrapped in a dark camp blanket beneath a brindleberry bush, his unconscious mind methodically making schematics and escape routes for a panopoly of situations that might occur within the palace of Jierna Tal. Had Dranth been conscious, he would have been undertaking the same chain of thought.

  He had already determined that he was prepared to sacrifice Yabrith if worse came to worst, though that would be an unfortunate turn of events. Though no one in the Raven’s Guild considered Yabrith to be a solo operator, he had the long-term memory of the organization at the edge of his consciousness, and he had been a favorite of Esten, the legendary guildmistress, when she was still alive.

  It had never ceased to amaze Dranth that a man of such little repute as Yabrith would be welcome in the guildmistress’s bed, but then, Esten had cravings for which even the most cold-blooded of men had reservations. At one time or another, virtually every member of the guild had serviced the guildmistress, often as a rite of initiation, and on many more than one occasion, a poor performance in that regard had led to a quick burial later in the night.

  Apparently Yabrith had been satisfactory, at least.

  The image of Esten’s rotting head, worm-ridden eye sockets and beetles in her hair, stuffed summarily into a small packing crate and wrapped casually in paper, delivered to his doorstep, still haunted the guild scion. Because his dreams were rare, he was spared the thought of it at night. But during the day, when his mind had finished all the calculations and algorithms that kept him routinely alive, when his thoughts had free space, the memory of her face would return, staring at him blindly, hissing at him with a mouth where the tongue had rotted out.

  Avenge me, it whispered.

  Dranth rolled over to free his shoulder of the rock that was bedeviling it on the cold, sandy ground and groaned in his sleep.

  He had tried.

  He had failed.

  But until his last breath, he would continue to prosecute the blood oath.

  Until his last breath.

  Already he had begun to suspect that the furor for revenge was beginning to wane in several of the other guildsmen. While in life Esten had their love and loyalty without question, the cost of his crusade to bring her murderers to tribal justice was adding up to a ledger that was hard to balance.

  But that was because none of them had seen her as he had when he had first become aware of her.

  Dranth, who was old enough to have been her father, potentially her grandfather, had first come upon the little murderous prodigy in a back alley in Yarim when she was only eight years old. He had seen her first from behind, her dark, ragged hair bouncing across her shoulders as she systematically removed the organs of a soldier who had fallen asleep, drunk, between the taverns he had been frequenting earlier that night. She managed to eviscerate him so quickly, so cleanly, that Dranth had stood frozen in nothing less than awe at the sight.

  Then, when she was finished, she wiped her nose with her sleeve and turned to see him watching her.

  And smiled.

  That smile, glittering teeth below eyes as dark as the night sky within a face framed by matching hair, had caused him to silently swear his soul into alien slavery, to vow to protect and promote her for the rest of his life.

  Never even imagining that hers would end so soon, before his.

  She was the only person he had ever loved.

  He had never tired of doing anything Esten needed, unquestioningly answering every demand, undertaking any job, even willingly allowing her to deflower herself upon him at the age of eleven, something that even he found mentally abhorrent but physically irresistible. The image of her young face, still missing some of the adult teeth, staring down from atop him, carefully watching his reaction, was burned uncomfortably into his memory, and it returned now, her eyes narrow in observation, sparkling as she forced him into fondling her in ways she knew made him uncomfortable.

  Even in his sleep, acid rose in his throat at the memory of her insistently putting his hand on her prepubescent nipple, a place that a breast one day would be, guiding him in techniques of stimulation she should never have known so soon. He knew that her physical immaturity could not be allowing her any sexual satisfaction at the things she was making him do. He knew exactly why she demanded them of him.

  Because they made him uncomfortable.

  She had even told him so.

  He had taught her what she wanted to learn, how to use her body to entice and control men, and in turn, she had used that knowledge as a weapon of impressive potency to gain her what she wanted, when her other weapons—a brilliant, quick mind, savage beauty, deadly aim with a blade, and the complete and utter lack of a soul—were insufficient.

  Avenge me.

  Suddenly, as a chill night wind swept under the bush, dropping thorns on his face, Dranth woke and sat up carefully, shivering.

  Returning to Talquist, having failed, was one of the riskier things he had ever undertaken.

  But at least he felt he had the winning card in his pocket not only to survive, but to gain another chance at killing the Bolg king, the man who had taken Esten from him.

  And, more specifically, the giant Sergeant-Major who had done the actual killing.

  He passed a thin hand over the hollows of his bald head at the memory of the voice of the woman in the meadow where the assassination attempt had gone wrong, the woman who had been the target of the initial paralytic.

  Whom they had planned to take, along with her infant child, to the emperor of Sorbold, after killing the men they sought.

  Meridion, shhhh, now. Shhhh.

  Meridion.

  He had the name.

  The name Talquist craved above all other pieces of information.

  Dranth reached over and shook the snoring Yabrith awake.

  “Get up. We are almost there.”

  “It’s not dawn yet,” Yabrith muttered, yawning widely and farting loudly.

  “All the better,” Dranth said, slinging his pack to his shoulder. “A few more hours of darkness will serve to get us all that much further to Jierna Tal. Let’s go.”

  6

  BENEATH THE WAVES OF THE WIDE CENTRAL SEA

  Ashe could feel the sun on his face long before he deigned to open his eyes to it.

  The water around him was lightening to a hazy green as morning came to the world above, a world with no boundaries or landmarks, nothing to break the endlessness of the sea.

  He had been traveling for less than a sennight. This was the fifth sunrise he had experienced since leaving the dry world; it was now bringing the watery realm to wakefulness again. A nominal amount of sleep was still necessary to sustain his consciousness, but it was only enough to rest his mind a little, and did not interfere with his progress into the depths.

  The first two days had been a disturbing confirmation of everything he knew from scouting reports on the coastline blockade. The waters north of Avonderre Harbor where he had waded into the sea were clogged with debris and bits of broken ships, caught in the current and floating in the waves, even now, weeks after the assault and raid from the air that had destroyed one of the greatest and busiest ports in the Known World. Talquist’s forces had managed to eradicate in a relatively few hours what had taken centuries to build.

  The sunlit realm of the first hundred or so fathoms of depth, the part of the sea in which vision was still useful, was full of fish this morning. He had passed through them in his sleep; now, awake and conscious as he had become with the morning light, he was aware of the song of a large cetacean, a whale in all likelihood, somewhere nearby. Ashe knew his wakefulness had made him more corporeal than he was in his sleep, and he hovered in the drift, waiting for it to pass, along with the swirling schools of its prey.

  As the huge creature’s wake rumbled through him, he thought back to the time less than a year before when he had met his most illustrious ancestor not very far from this place in the sea, back on the same cliffs that towered above where he had entered
the water.

  In his search for Rhapsody when she had been captured by the demon known as Michael, the Wind of Death, he had come upon MacQuieth Monodiere Nagall, his mother’s ancient forebear and hero of the Seren War two thousand years before. In the sight of history and the whole of the world, MacQuieth was believed long dead, but Ashe had learned some time before that reports of the deaths of ancient Cymrians were occasionally overrated. And while he had witnessed the hero’s actual demise, had been told that his heartbeat, which Achmed the Snake, a man who could track such things from the old world, had said rang like a great bell, even below the waves, was now silent, there was more than enough memory in the sea, especially those places near where the great man had lived, that carried his essence, even now.

  The longer he spent, vaporous and formless, beneath the waves, the harder it became to fend off strong memories that would creep over him in the quiet depths.

  The most difficult ones were memories of loss: the death of his father, Llauron ap Gwylliam, a complicated man with a painful past, but who had risen above it in later years to be a steady religious leader and caring, if somewhat manipulative, father.

  He had regretted more than anything his rejection of Llauron, his unkind, brusque refusal to allow his father the one thing in the world Llauron craved once he had forsworn his humanity and become, like his great-grandmother Elynsynos, a dragon in elemental form.

  The simple knowledge that he would be allowed to know his grandchild.

  That unkindness to the man who had taught him everything he knew about forestry and the wilderness, who had floated him in the tides as an infant, taught him to swim in them as a child and had taken him to the sea as a youth, had engendered in him a love of the earth, taught him the lore of places that were natural and the cradle of history ate at him now as he walked the sea, formless in it, as his father had once held him in his earliest memory.

  Perhaps one day I will understand what it truly means to be a father, he thought as he passed through the wreckage of ships, the burning barrels of magnesium and pitch, the body parts that had still not been consumed by fish and other creatures of the Deep.