“No, my lady.”
“I was told my father tried to steal the crown.” Her eyes surveyed the men before her. Not for one moment had she believed that. “My grandfather is to blame, isn’t he? He gave the order to have my father killed.”
Lord Morwood raised a hand and coughed into his fist. Archibald Benton turned his eyes away. Gershan sneered.
“Speak,” Amilia said.
The vulture did. “You want to know whose fault it was?”
She looked at him, lip pulled back.
“Your auntie’s,” Gershan spat. “That bastard bitch. She was always whispering away at him, pouring poison in his ear. There’s plenty been said about her, my lady. Ugly stuff. None of it good. You sure you want to know?”
Her eyes were bright with disdain. “No,” she said at once. She is down in the crypts as we speak, she thought. Whatever she might have done in the past, she gave her life for mine. We’re even. And she was just a tool, like me, and her son.
“Oh?” Gershan chuckled. “Not even a little bit. She’s dead now, so what’s the bother?”
Amilia frowned. There was no way they could know that. Jonik had carried his dead mother through the tunnels and caverns himself, along that twisting, daunting route, through narrow shafts and past plunging chasms, and laid her to rest in the crypts. Were we seen? She couldn’t think how. That side of the palace had been completely deserted when they arrived, and the rest of it was hardly much busier. And she was wrapped up like a mummy anyway. There’s no way they could have known…
Lord Morwood gave a firm shake of the head, and directed a hard stare at Gershan. “We don’t know that for certain, my lady,” he said, turning to face her “Your auntie is missing, that’s all. She may have returned to the Blakewood lands, or…”
“Or what?” cackled Gershan. “Gone off to fight the war? She didn’t go missing, Morwood, she vanished.” He clipped his bony fingers. “Just like that.”
She went through the portal, Amilia thought, realisation dawning. And they know nothing about it.
Gershan put those spider-eyes on her, beady and black. “First your grandfather disappears, then your auntie, now you reappear out of thin air, all the way from Thalan.” He snorted. “Magic, you said just now. Since when did you Lukars become mages?”
“Mages?” she hissed, sudden fury surging inside her. Her eyes blazed, bright and green. “You call me a mage?”
The old man shrugged. He looked much like a mage himself, all twisted and rotted like Fhanrir, cruel-eyed and ancient. “Well, something’s not right, that’s clear. You’re being awful evasive, Princess.”
“Get out,” she said to him. “I have no need of you.”
He didn’t move.
“I said get out!”
He frowned at her, confused, a sneer plastered on his face. “Why? Spitting too close to the mark, am I? You got some secret to tell?”
“Just go. Now. Get rid of him, Lord Morwood. I cannot stand his face.”
“My lady…”
“I said get rid of him!” She threw her golden chalice, hard, hitting the creature square in the jaw. There was a sickening smack as his chin split open, teeth shattering, blood bursting from the ruin of his face. The Master of the Moorlands stumbled back in shock, reeling, reaching out to steady himself, and fell heavily to the floor. Where he hit there was no rug or rushes. His head whipped back, cracking against stone. Then stillness, silence. Just the pant from Amilia’s chest. “Drag him out,” she commanded, breathing heavily. “Put him on a wagon and send him back to the Moorlands. I never want to see him again.”
Lord Morwood stepped over, concerned, and knelt down. Blood was starting to ooze from where Gershan’s head had struck the stone, horribly red on white. Morwood pressed his fingers to the vulture’s neck, held them there a moment, turned his head so his ear was up against Gerhan’s nose and mouth, listening.
Amilia’s heart was slowly rising up her throat. “Is he breathing?”
“Faintly. He needs urgent medical attention.” Morwood stood and marched to the door, pushed it open and called in the guards. They sped inside at once, armour clanking, to lift the old lord and carry him away. “Careful. Careful,” Morwood told them. “Archibald. Go with them.” He ushered them all out of the door, steering them away until the two of them were alone. Amilia was staring at the patch of red blood. The fragments of teeth, yellow and brown, scattered upon the stone. One of the jewels had been knocked loose of the chalice. An emerald. Like my eyes.
Lord Morwood went to pick the chalice up from the floor, and the emerald as well, placing them aside on a table. “He may die, my lady,” he said, after a long moment. “I know you did not want to kill him, but…”
“Who says I didn’t? He deserves to die.”
“My lady, you don’t mean that.”
“He’s a creature. An ugly lecherous snake, like his sigil. Everything he says is poison.”
“Words, my lady. Elsewise he is harmless. If he dies…”
“I hope he does. He calls me a mage? Me?” The bile was creeping up her throat. She thought of the old man Talbert, who was not really a man at all, but a mage by name of Meknyr, a Shadowcloak who had taken on the guise of Sir Munroe Moore, who had tricked her and deceived her and led her into the mountains. “I hate mages,” she raged. “I hate them. Every one!”
She turned to snatch the jug of wine from the top of the balcony. A gulp, another, and the wine was pouring down her neck, red and warm, soaking into her shirt.
Lord Morwood came up behind her. A big hand gripped her wrist. “My lady…stop…”
She struggled, half-drunk from the wine, and tore away from him. “Get your hands off me. Don’t touch me!”
He backed away. “Princess, I’m only trying to…”
She pushed past him, away from the balcony, needing to give herself space. Echoes of memories haunted her mind. Her wrists bound to bedposts. The guards, watching on. Her husband, drunk on power, mad, crawling up between her legs… ‘I want a son, Amilia, you’ll give me a son…’
I killed your sons, she thought, snarling. I slew your seed a thousand times, and I’m glad they tore your child from my womb.
She hadn’t been awake when it happened. Not since that moment at the side of the road, when Sir Munroe Moore’s armour had rippled to mist and the Shadowcloak Meknyr had shown his true face. ‘Beware the silver man’, the dwarf Black-Eye had warned her on the boat. ‘One day, he’s going to change’. Those words had haunted her ever since he’d said them, yet not until that moment had she known what he meant.
After that, it was fragments only. Faint shapes and blurred recollections. Meknyr had put her into a deep sleep, though it only ever lasted so long, and when she began to come around she would blink and see snippets of the world. A cold pine forest, the trees bearded in frost. Ravens in the branches, watching. A glimpse of a high valley and mountain pass, eagles circling. Snow, falling down in sheets, heavy as godsteel plate. She had seen the black towers, high and blunt and dreaded, enshrouded in white mist. Seen the soaring peaks and prominences, their slopes draped in blankets of snow. But of her arrival at the fortress, nothing. Nor the procession into the refuge, and the cold stone slab, and the opening of her legs, the extraction…
