Chapter 10
The new horse was a spotted grey mare called Pain, which a cheerful stablehand informed me was short for Pain in the Arse. I liked her immediately.
She and Smudge had been saddled, and travel provisions had been packed, by the time Durlain appeared downstairs, Givronesque as ever in his resplendent black-and-purple coat.
There was an irritable edge to his joviality that suggested a wicked hangover, but he barely looked at me as he settled the bill; when Frode enquired whether breakfast had been to his taste, there was not a word about porridge.
It was reassuring and ominous in roughly equal amounts.
I still tasted berries on the back of my tongue as we mounted our horses.
Worse, I still felt the disconcerting rush of causing trouble, and no matter the stupidity, no matter the nervous anticipation knotting my guts, that ill-advised exhilaration was almost as addictive as the decadent sweetness of my breakfast.
Durlain didn’t utter a word until we’d left the inn several streets behind us, until the high oakwood facade and its green glass windows were no longer visible over the rows of thatched roofs.
It was only then that the proud, haughty lines of Givron’s expression melted off his face and moved over for the look of cold determination I was more familiar with, all traces of his fictional hangover gone at once.
I braced myself.
But all he said, his honed profile stark in the pale morning light, was, ‘We’re making for the Odine estate. Any suggestions?’
Nothing about porridge.
It sounded like a trap.
Except that he was finally telling me more about the destination that would have to keep his sister out of his father’s hands, and surely that suggested he wasn’t planning to dump my dead body in a ditch alongside the road?
‘By the Odine estate,’ I said carefully, not fully daring to believe I’d gotten away with it so easily, ‘you mean the manor in which that deserting Averre general has been living for the last couple of years, I take it?’
‘Mondren.’ His pointed pronunciation of the name didn’t suggest a cordial alliance between fellow rebels. ‘That manor, yes.’
‘And he’s the one you want to ask about your father and Lesceron?’
‘His wife,’ Durlain absently amended, eyes scanning the resplendent mansions on either side of the road. ‘If you have any opinions on the best way to get there, might I suggest prioritising those over this interrogation? We’ve almost reached the gate.’
I swallowed several unpleasant remarks, including the point that we were nowhere near the edge of the city yet, and ground out a mostly civil, ‘I’d prefer going south. I usually took the north road with Lark, and—’
‘We’ve had enough people recognising you already,’ Durlain finished, not missing a beat. ‘Very well. South road it is.’
As if we’d been travelling together for years.
As if I hadn’t held a death blade to his throat last night.
Now, with all practicalities taken care of, surely some vicious retaliation would follow?
But we rode through Elenon in silence, past the fireborn mansions and the small human abodes, past the bloodstained prison pavement and the dangling nooses on the market square …
Around us, bony travellers and hollow-eyed children were breathing reminders of the winter we’d left behind.
A little way ahead, visible only by daylight, the fumes of the city’s hot springs wafted towards the pale grey sky – springs that had been boiling pools of acid since the town’s first provost had called the fire to the surface of the earth, but at least the heat shielded the populace from the worst of the winter cold.
We passed through the gates without trouble. The guards’ gazes were cold on my skin – but no one cried out about witches. No one moved to stop us. Even Durlain didn’t hold his horse to betray me to the Elenon law enforcement and smirk coldly at me as they dragged me away.
It took me until past the first hill ridge to believe it – that we’d managed. That I’d looked Belloc Estien in the eyes and survived the encounter.
For now.
It sounded oddly like Lark’s voice, that thought.
Around us, the slopes were bleak and barren – interspersed with the occasional acre of farmland at first, then more and more desolate until only the occasional twisted tree and hardiest mountain grasses clung to the rocky soil.
The wind picked up, carrying a whiff of acrid sulphur from the springs we’d left behind.
I huddled in the saddle, my tunic suddenly no longer so warm without any fireborn princes pressed against my back – not, of course, that I was going to make that point out loud, or even think of that point for longer than the time it took me to squash the thought again.
Durlain was riding noticeably faster than the previous day.
Perhaps that was the only reason he hadn’t evened the score after his breakfast, I considered with a sinking feeling in my guts – his more imminent worries on his sister’s behalf.
Perhaps it explained why he hadn’t yet collected his side of our bargain, either …
but I doubted a man like him would forget about a debt owed for even a second, and for a short, guilt-ridden moment, I almost found myself hoping Mondren’s mysterious wife wouldn’t have anything reassuring to say.
Then I remembered that no Cimmura would mean no Lark, and I swallowed those thoughts so quickly I nearly choked on them.
The Odine estate was a surprise.
I’d seen dozens of these manors during my years in Aranc’s service – some of them owned by human nobles on their ancestral lands, others by fireborn newcomers settling in the old homes of dead Seidrinn loyalists.
Regardless of the inhabitants, all of those houses tended to have the same look to them: a rough, sturdy framework betraying the old Seidrinn architecture, refurbished more or less successfully to fit the fashions brought in with the fireborn invasion.
Marble facades covering granite brickwork.
Galleries and turrets plastered against walls.
Motifs of serpents and dragons where runic carvings had once lined the doors and windows, and glass to replace those simple magic workings that had once kept the cold out.
I hadn’t expected anything different from an Averre general, deserter or no – but the silhouette that emerged from the dusk when we finally crossed the Odine border could not with the best will in the world be called traditional, for any tradition that had ever existed on these shores.
It … sprawled.
The heart of the structure was still very much an old Seidrinn hall, built for warmth rather than looks, and intended to host a full village and all of their cattle during the worst of winter storms. But on the east side of that hall, an elongated two-story wing jutted out at an awkward angle, all brand new masonry yet a good imitation of old-world style.
There was an actual moat, spanned by several large and historic-looking arch bridges.
On the west side, a few dozen yards away from the main building, a squat tower rose from the stony earth like a newcomer not invited to sit with the others – the construction connected to the house itself with a low, closed gallery, and topped with a copper dome, of all things in the world.
When we followed the path in its wide loop around the house, it turned out part of the north wall had been removed to allow for the creation of a large glass conservatory.
That alone had to have been an eye-wateringly expensive endeavour, and it stood out from the rest of the place like a pearl from hogshit …
yet somehow, against this backdrop of insanity, it still managed to look oddly charming.
Durlain let out a barely audible sigh as we approached, muttering something about eyesores under his breath.
I expected him to lead us to the stables – which had, strangely, been built as an elegant display of marble and gold – but instead he halted Smudge by an unassuming copse of trees and nodded at me to dismount as well.
We went on foot from there, making not for the impressive front gate but for a smaller door in the east wing.
It wasn’t locked, it turned out; Durlain pulled it open as if it was the door to his own bedroom.
‘After you,’ he informed me in a clipped tone that didn’t leave much room for objections, or even for the point that we hadn’t, as far as I was aware, been invited.
In a last attempt at sanity, I started, ‘Are you quite sure …’
He raised an impatient eyebrow at me in the rapidly deepening dark. ‘Do I strike you as unsure, Thraga?’
He did not.
Having run out of better ideas, I snuck in, keeping my hand on Uruz’s hilt and praying there at least wouldn’t be rats.
The narrow passage was pitch dark, and only when Durlain closed the door behind himself did a small flame flare in his scarred palm – illuminating steep stairs, cobweb-covered walls, and thank hell below, no rat turds.
I went up first, since there wasn’t even enough room to let us pass each other.
It meant I was also the first to reach the equally narrow door waiting at the top of the climb – unlocked and leading to—
Oh, hell.
To a bedroom.
I faltered on the doorstep, blinking with growing unease at the place opening up before me.
There was a broad and comfortably made bed.
A half-finished painting on an easel, a dressing table at which one could seat three women at once.
Every inch of the room suggested this was a well-born lady’s home, and sensible people did not break into well-born ladies’ homes; noble families tended to take much more vehement issue with loss of honour than with a simple stolen purse.
I swallowed and tried, ‘Maybe we shouldn’t …’