Galdron and Everard exchanged glances, the latter chewing his lip. Though both were lifelong bachelors, their resemblance ended there. Galdron was bluff-faced, red-bearded and balding, and wore lamellar armour over mail, while Everard never had a single greying hair out of place and wore his formal court dress like a uniform. As always, the braid marking his rank as Lyram’s aide-de-camp was pinned to his shoulder. Galdron shrugged.
Lyram nodded with satisfaction. “Exactly. This isn’t an invasion. This is political.”
“Half a day doesn’t give us much time to prepare.” Galdron spoke in a faultlessly deferent and almost too reasonable tone, adopting the attitude of a man talking to a mad king likely to order his head chopped off. He restlessly passed his helm from one ham fist to the other. “All we can hope is to hold out here long enough for reinforcements. Not in time for most of us, maybe, but we can buy time for the king to muster a defence. You’ll need to send word to the king, warn him of the invasion.”
“It’s not an invasion!” Lyram’s shout rang off the walls of the triangular courtyard, echoing slightly before fading away.
A stir ran along the walls as the men and women manning the battlements glanced towards them and away.
Everard’s lips thinned and his expression grew more pinched, but Galdron met Lyram’s gaze.
“My lord.” He said the words firmly, emphasising the title Lyram detested. “Whether this is an invasion or not is moot. You must send word to the king. I will find volunteers willing to risk the ride. You should compose a message.” He began to turn away, then stopped. “And shave.”
Seething, Lyram spun on his heel. Why hadn’t he said something to Galdron? He should have reprimanded him, not allowed him to... what? Scold him? Dragon balls, but Everard was right to take away his whisky. No matter how he fell apart on the inside, he needed to hold himself together before his soldiers, now more than ever. And he couldn’t dress Galdron down without drawing attention to his sorry state.
He pressed his fingers to his temples as he crossed the courtyard. How much sleep did he get last night? Midnight had come and gone before the whisky dulled the pain and oblivion took him.
Not enough, that’s for sure. Not enough to plan a war.
He entered the well room and turned left, climbing the winding stairs to the first floor and his suite. The brands that lined the walls were not yet lit, leaving the stairwell in dim shadows and hiding the shimmer of the pink limestone walls. The air here was cool, dank with moisture after the recent melting of the snow. His boot steps rang echoes off the distant stones.
With the castellan and his family occupying the more lavish suites in the east wall, Lyram had claimed the old lord’s rooms overlooking the gate. Displacing the resident family just because he’d fallen into disfavour at court would have been poor form. He passed the carved door to the family’s residence, took the two steps up to his own quarters, and shouldered through the heavy oaken door into his untidy sitting room.
He didn’t allow the servants in here. Everard tidied as much as he could, and that was all. In the near corner, his mail shirt and his moulded cuir bouilli plate armour rested on a stand. Stacks of papers swallowed the surface of a huge blackwood desk positioned to his right beneath the narrow arrowslit looking out towards the ruined outer wall. Straight ahead, through a wide, irregular archway, the covers trailed off the edge of a massive four-poster bed. He spent his nights sleeping inside the curved walls of the gate tower itself.
He crossed the room, boot heels echoing on the floorboards, to the washstand just inside the archway. His razor blade sat next to a silvered glass and pitcher of water. He dipped a finger into the water and shivered at the icy chill. Winter was barely past, and snow probably still persisted in the mountains, with every chance yet of a spring blizzard. The fire had burned low on the hearth and needed stoking to warm the room.
How many days since he’d last shaved? He didn’t recall. He picked up his razor and the mirror and examined his jaw. His chin and cheeks were covered in coarse reddish-blond stubble and his hair hung raggedly about his face, as if he’d hacked it off with a knife. When did I do that? No recollection even stirred. Must have been drunk out of his mind.
His bloodshot blue eyes stared back at him, mocking. He dropped the razor, letting it clatter into the washbasin, placed the mirror down with more care, and turned back towards the sitting room.
But above the desk, as mocking as his reflection, hung the portrait of his younger self, clean-shaven and square-jawed, with dark-red hair pulled back in a proper queue, staring imperiously with clear blue eyes out of the canvas. His shoulders were set and his plaid flung back to reveal the dragon-hilted clan sword still on his hip. That, at least, remained the same.
The solitary portrait was years old now. A more recent painting hung in the capital. That one included Zaheva.
He dropped into the chair at the desk and buried his face in his hands, as if hiding from the memories, or the portrait. Without raising his head, he groped for the desk drawer, opened it, and found the whisky bottle. As he lifted it to his lips, the fumes burning in his nostrils, the door opened.
Everard paused with one hand on the door handle. His expression didn’t change, but disappointment and reproof sharpened his gaze.
Lyram placed the bottle back on the desk with a muffled thud and wiped his chin with the back of his hand. Stubble scratched accusingly against the leather of his glove.
His aide dragged another chair across the bare floor to the desk, wood squealing on floorboards, and dropped into the seat. His wireframe glasses slipped down his nose, and he pushed them back up over grey eyes. Reaching out, he placed the flask he’d confiscated in the courtyard back on the desk. “The castellan heard the news.”
Lyram shrugged. “I expect he did.”
“I believe you were writing missives for the king, sir?” Everard’s tone, as always, was formal and inflectionless, the recrimination in his voice too subtle for detection by anyone who didn’t know him well. With crisp movements, he pulled a sheet of paper free of its stack and placed it on the desk. He unstopped an ink well with one hand, removed the whisky bottle with the other, and positioned the ink next to Lyram’s elbow. “Galdron is picking out volunteers, fast riders all, to carry word, sir.”
Lyram took the bottle back from Everard and dropped it into the drawer, where the glass rattled around before coming to a stop. He stared at the blank paper with unseeing eyes, aware of the flask still sitting alongside the inkwell. “What difference will it make? Drault will speak against sending aid to us.”
“Fortunately the antipathy between yourself and his highness matters not a whit in this instance, sir. Prince Drault has no say in military matters, least of all when an unknown army is at large within our borders.”
“No, but Traeburhn does, and he’s Drault’s dog. He’ll fake an investigation, arrange false reports of no unrest, and no aid will come.”
Everard’s hand darted out, faster than Lyram thought him capable, and slapped him. Lyram jerked back in his chair, knocking the inkwell over.
“What the—? Everard! How dare you!” The blow had stung more than hurt.
His aide righted the ink bottle and mopped at the spilled ink with a cloth usually used to clean armour. “I would not strike my lord, but a foolish boy who is sulking and drowning his sorrows in a whisky bottle as an army marches to kill us all? Our lives depend on you, and you, my lord, are only in love with death.”
The exaggerated sarcasm was impossible to miss. Lyram rubbed his cheek and scowled. “You make it sound like I am a drunkard.”
“You weren’t sent out here for exemplary service, sir.”
“No, I was sent out here because someone murdered my wife, and because Drault wants me dead!”
Everard folded his hands neatly in his lap, managing to look prim. The small bald spot in the crown of his head gleamed in the sun coming through the arrowslit. “You were sent out here because you foolishly punched a prince in the nose and thought you could get away with it, if I may say so, sir.”
No, you may not say so. But an aide had more leeway than any other, and Everard spoke only the truth. It still warmed him, remembering the shock spreading across Drault’s face as bright blood bloomed against his skin; the satisfying pain in his hand; the way Drault tumbled to the ground. He’d broken a knuckle on the prince’s head, but Drault’s nose was no longer as straight as it used to be, nor was his face as pretty as he liked.
“You didn’t hear what he said.” That came out sulky, and Lyram gritted his teeth.
“Nobody heard what he said, sir, except you. And while I would never doubt my lord’s word, I must observe, sir, that any such accusation would carry more weight coming from the sober son of a duke than from the whisky-soaked commander of a minor castle.” Everard’s gaze darted towards the portrait.
Lyram drew a deep breath. Drault’s words that day still seared him, had burned deep into his memory: Where is your whore of a wife today? At home entertaining your vassals?
Dead. She was already dead and cold when the prince spoke his hateful words, lying abandoned in the snow with an arrow in her back and her throat slit. She’d died alone.
Lyram curled his fingers into fists until his nails dug into his palms, then let his fingers spring open. “I’ll dictate. You write. Three copies. To be handed to the king, and the king alone.”
