Chapter 8
They’d decorated the Elenon town gate with fresh new corpses.
The sun had set by the time we reached the city, and in the flickering light of the whale oil lamps lining the path, it almost seemed the two witches were still moving where they hung.
I tried not to look. Tried to keep my eyes cast down as we neared the imposing wooden structure of the gate, tried to focus on the oxen and the rattling wagons before us instead …
but no matter how hard I looked elsewhere, I still didn’t see anything but the two dead women nailed to the palisade on either side of the road, maimed and stripped bare.
The cart driver ahead of us spat at them as he passed.
Durlain’s arm wrapped quietly around my waist, as if he thought he’d have to hold me back from slicing the bastard’s ears off.
He need not have bothered. I knew what fighting led to, and the city of Elenon – with its sharp-edged palisade, its two heavily protected gates, and its infamous guard corps – was about the last place in the world where I was planning to make a spectacle of myself.
My fingers still curled as we rode past the bodies. Straight line, triangle against it – wunjo. Good luck.
Perhaps it would help them just a little on the way down to Niflheim.
Durlain didn’t let go of me as we rode into the town proper, past the low wooden houses with their thatched roofs and smoke-belching chimneys.
Lanterns cast small circles of light around doors and windows.
The air was crisp with the promise of night frost; the smell of fire and fish stew hung heavy in the narrow streets.
Farmers, merchants, and craftsmen bustled around us, making for their homes and hostels …
and then there were the glimpses of metal helmets among the crowd, guardsmen on the lookout for trouble, and it took all I had not to flinch whenever I caught sight of one of them.
None of them granted us so much as a second glance. If the Svein’s Creek provost had sent out ravens to look for a fireborn mage travelling with a fair-haired woman, it seemed they hadn’t yet reached Elenon.
Small blessings.
After two hours of sharing a saddle in icy silence, I felt like I deserved a few of those.
The last three times I’d passed through the town with Lark, we’d stayed at The Broken Oar, a pleasant but affordable inn just south of the market square.
Durlain, on the other hand, rode north. The streets grew quieter around us with every corner we rounded, the houses grew larger, until we reached a stately three-story building a stone’s throw away from the provost’s residence on the north flank of the city.
There he finally brought Smudge to a standstill and dismounted with a swiftness that suggested he was as tired of my nearness as I was of his.
I was much, much slower to follow.
The inn’s wood-and-granite facade towered over me, grand and imposing, intricate carvings of wolves and deer twisting around the doorframes and windows.
Fragrant flames burned in two cast-iron braziers.
A gilded sign swung gently in their heat.
And then there were the windows, glass windows, their smooth surface gleaming golden in the firelight – just like the nobles’ rooms at Mount Estien, in the wings of the palace that lay farthest away from our humble barracks and closest to the slopes of the mountain.
I’d never been so acutely aware of the mud in my hair.
Durlain, on the other hand, strode towards the building as if he’d been born in it.
I slid off Smudge’s back, knees shaking, the cold biting at my ankles as my trousers shifted up my shins.
Already a young man came hurrying from the stables, and this time Durlain made no move to take care of his horse himself.
No more than a few quick words were exchanged before he walked on to the front door, cloak billowing around his legs; by the look of confusion the stablehand threw me in passing, those instructions hadn’t covered who the hell I was and what the staff was supposed to do with me.
I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do with me, either, but walking after my sort-of-ally, much as he might hate me, seemed the safest bet.
Ahead of me, Durlain did not look back as he pushed the heavy oakwood door open.
Something changed in his steps that same moment, so abruptly I startled and blinked behind him – snappish, purposeful strides melting into a languid, almost lazy gait as he sauntered into the room beyond, long legs suddenly moving across the polished wooden floor as though they were enjoying the view along the way.
The slant of his shoulders shifted too, a subtle loosening that nonetheless affected his entire bearing.
The motions of his head went … fluid. All at once, he was no longer a prince on a mission; instead, the man before me looked every inch the bored, noble traveller in desperate need of some fun.
And that was before I’d heard his voice.
‘Fritjof! Good fellow!’ Loud, affected, and just a fraction whiny, his court accent suddenly thick as honey.
‘Thought I’d never arrive, will you believe it?
They should do something about that damned cold in this backwater – tell me you’ve got a meal and a bottle of good wine waiting for me, because I swear to the bloody flames, I’m about to perish. ’
The innkeeper’s forced smile couldn’t have been further removed from Hedda’s genuine hospitality.
He was clean-shaven, in the way of the courts; his coat, although of a simple fabric, was cut in the style most of Aranc’s nobles preferred.
But his accent was unmistakably native as he said, ‘Ah, Lord … Givron, isn’t it? ’
‘You’ve got it, old fellow.’ Durlain planted his elbows on the counter with an air of jovial impatience, tapping the polished wooden surface with two fingers at once. ‘Usual room, usual arrangement. Any of my nearest and dearest in attendance tonight?’
‘No other Averre nobility at the moment, my lord.’ The man’s tone was carefully neutral. ‘We do have a small company from Mabre staying with us, but—’
‘Mabre, eh?’ Durlain’s voice dripped with disdain – the usual fireborn contempt for all human lineages that had managed to keep their titles and land by currying favour with the new kings. ‘Thought I smelled something. The other royal houses, then?’
‘You might enjoy the company of Lady Naucelle Garnot, my lord. And there is a small delegation from the Estien court that—’
Durlain waved a dismissive hand. ‘Send Naucelle a bottle of your best, with my compliments. I look forward to dining with her. Have the luggage brought up, and— Oh. Get my servant a room wherever it is that you put her sort.’ Another half-hearted gesture, this time in my direction.
‘I’ll send her down once she’s done unpacking my bags. ’
Servant.
Her sort.
Fritjof met my gaze, and I could have sworn there was a flicker of shared suffering in his eyes. ‘Of course, Lord Givron.’
‘Excellent.’ Durlain pushed himself off the counter, snapping his fingers at me. ‘Come, girl.’
The shit-stained, snake-faced fucker.
Was this his revenge for the questions I’d asked during our ride?
Some vicious little joke to brighten his day?
Even Aranc had never tempted me this much to stab him in the thigh for the world to see, dangers be damned – because Aranc had been cruel and violent and gleefully malicious, but his cruelty had never been personal.
One couldn’t be personal towards a tool. Durlain, on the other hand …
Oh, he knew exactly what nerves he was hitting.
Only the memory of the corpses on the gate made me bow my head, grit my teeth, and mutter, ‘Yes, Lord Givron.’
He was already swaggering up the stairs.
Weapons and glassy-eyed deer heads hung from the cherrywood walls of the stairwell – more decorations mirroring the Estien court, where trophies from decades of hunts were proudly displayed in every hall and sitting room, and where wood from near-extinct trees was traded for eye-watering prices merely to serve as doors or panelling.
Large as this inn might be, only a few doors opened to the first landing.
Spacious rooms for a small number of guests, and that told me all I needed to know about the rates this place would charge.
Durlain’s my-father-is-paying strides made straight for the left of the building. I wasn’t sure whether the door had always been unlocked or an invisible army of servants took care of such matters while the guests were arriving, but it swung open without a creak of the hinges.
I expected the change as he stepped through, this time. That didn’t make it any less unnerving to see the whole of his posture switch personalities between one eyeblink and the next – spine stiffening, shoulders straightening, chin coming down a fraction.
His first words when I shut the door behind us weren’t a rueful, Sorry about that.
Instead, gaze aimed vaguely past my shoulder, voice crisp and soft again, all he said was, ‘You’ll have to work on your servant’s manners.’
Anger was faster than good sense.
It shouldn’t be. I was never reckless, never hot-headed enough to throw all caution to the wind and fight – except that Durlain Averre needed me alive, and for a single red-hazed moment, I wanted him quiet and cowering more than I wanted even the comfort of safety.
My feet launched me forward without another thought.
My left hand fisted in the front of his elegant black coat, too fast and unexpected for him to dodge.
The force of our collision sent him stumbling back, a single moment of lost control; his back smacked into the tapestry-covered wall.
Eihwaz already lay in my other hand.
He froze.