Chapter 21
TWENTY-ONE
There was one more wicked than any.
She, the cause of the Sundering –
that cataclysmic death of hope, and the ruin
of the Isles and their allies.
She, whose name shall be a curse –
she, who single-handedly tore the world to war and bloodshed.
She, whose blood poisoned the fold,
giving our Holy Majesty no choice but to wield his gods-given
right
to smite the heretical wickedness of sorcery from this good green
earth.
Biography of His Holy Majesty King Uhtric Arden-Draca,
Holy Devotee Godwine Airaldi, 686 A.S.
TWENTY-ONE
‘He did this! He did this!’
Captain Radnor had to be held back by three knights. Osian ordered Pedr and Blythe to escort Meilyr immediately to his rooms. Demelza went with them, dragging Meilyr beside her, shaking and near-deathly pale but determined.
The captain’s shouts turned to wordless curses, cries of soul-rending grief.
Meilyr’s body succumbed to shaking when Demelza, still trembling,
left to see if she was needed elsewhere. Blythe helped her down the
stairs, and Pedr shut the door to Osian’s chambers, leaving him
alone.
They thought he was the killer.
Bran’s alder. Surely it was a coincidence?
He paced, blood howling. Was there any way out of the castle? The trapdoor in the bedchamber—
No, he did not know how to get out that way. He was trapped, and had known this would happen. Now, it was too late.
Gods, Celyn—
Stop. Do not live it before it has happened. His mother’s words, comforting in theory but hard to put into practice.
Bran’s alder. The sharp bloom of it, from Kenelm Radnor’s flesh.
He wilted to the divan as his mind pulled up anchor. Not a new sensation, reached when fear and sound grew too much for his senses to bear. Numbness prickled, and he sat, emptied and unmoored.
A knock on the door slammed him back into himself, and he lurched to his feet.
Osian strode inside, grim expression ebbing as their eyes locked. Relief budded between them, and they met each other halfway. ‘Majesty,’ Meilyr began.
‘Are you all right?’
‘I swear, I did not…’
Osian’s arms were under his; Meilyr gripped them.
‘I know,’ the prince said, without doubt.
Aldreda strode into the room. Meilyr’s relief withered.
Osian turned as though to put himself between them. ‘You did not have to—’
‘No, I did.’ She halted before him. ‘Shut the door.’
Pedr, with a trace of hesitation and a glance at Osian, shut the door.
‘Twice.’ The Heir Apparent’s voice was deathly steady.
‘Some beast we thought slain has crawled into our midst and slaughtered Khaimlic nobility twice. Now I want blood, Osian. I want it on my hands. I sided with you in there because Gelens would eat us alive otherwise, but tell me how you’re going to find this monster without ripping open your precious Cyngalon the way our great-grandfather did. Tell me.’
Meilyr had not truly been afraid of her before. He was now.
Osian remained calm. ‘As I told the Council, we find and question those present at the tournament, including crownsworn and nobles. Someone may have seen something. We do not limit the questioning to those of Cyngaleg blood, and ask the populace for cooperation.’
‘The populace,’ Aldreda hissed. ‘They’ll be cheering in the streets. Gods damn it.’
‘That is far more likely if we respond indiscriminately, or heavy-handedly.’
‘But one of them is killing our nobles, Osian, and we have no idea who, how they’re doing it, or anything at all – except they should already be dead.’
Meilyr’s pulse hammered.
‘Regardless,’ Osian said, ‘we will find them. We also speak to those who knew Kenelm Radnor personally. Anything that connects him and Leighton may help.’
It was a very good point Meilyr had not considered.
Of course, there was one thing that connected both victims: him.
‘How can you be so gods damn calm?’ Aldreda bit. She exhaled loudly and paced. ‘It’s absolutely infuriating. And you’re probably right, which I hate too.’
‘I will also speak to Father.’
Aldreda stopped. Her expression flickered to something much more sisterly. ‘You… No, I can do it – I should do it.’
‘I will do it. Cyngalon is my charge, and my responsibility.’
She sighed, tired. ‘Fine, enjoy that. And expect Gelens to have beaten you to it.’ She looked at Meilyr, and his heart did not quail the way it would have a moment before.
‘I do not suppose you want to confess to killing our nobles? I’d rather you weren’t guilty, even if it would make things cleaner…
Gods, it was a joke – all right, a poor one, but a joke nonetheless. ’
She was good at concealing herself with humour. But there were fractures in her opinion of him: breaks in the ice, starting to show.
‘Tell Father I side with you,’ she told Osian. ‘But show me this will work, quickly.’
She left. Osian ordered Pedr to escort Meilyr downstairs to his own rooms.
It grew dark. Meilyr mustered enough strength to pace his parlour as
the wind groaned against the windows. Whoever had killed both nobles,
they were fiercely strong. Far, far stronger than him.
They had also decided two men should die, publicly, in ways that revealed the survival of gwehydd blood. Somehow, he was not yet in a cell – but was certainly a breath away from outright accusation.
Captain Radnor would be after his head, and who could blame him.
His son had been murdered before his eyes, and Meilyr was the newest member of court, the timing of his arrival and his interactions with the victims making him the most obvious suspect.
How long until even Osian’s words were not enough – until he too doubted his consort?
Meilyr had to do something, but what?
Celyn’s words resurfaced: They wouldn’t be able to stop you. But he flinched at even the thought. If he did have to escape, he would find another way.
He had once sworn an oath to the memory of his parents that he would never again use his weaving.
He had bent that oath for Idwal, his foster-father, on his deathbed – had refashioned it a dozen times for others seeking aid.
For Wade Bevan – even for Faina, pushing the ingredients in her tonic to work just a little harder.
It had always come naturally, even when he had tried to suppress it.
Weaving was like breathing: even in momentary lapse, the body resorted to survival.
The flesh remembered, even if the mind shied away.
He felt it every time his fingertips traced the roots and herbs and petals of his work, every time he ran a leaf or stem through his hands and knew what it needed, easier than he could tell the needs of his own body.
He had felt it the instant Osian’s blood had touched his own.
His nature was just that: natural, a part of him. But whilst using his blood to heal was one thing, to hurt was another – and there he would still draw the line, unless it was truly the only way to ensure Celyn’s safety.
There were other ways he could prepare. He would need to make a full inventory of the gardens, start with the most likely plants, then…
The realisation took the last of the heat from his body.
The gardens.
Oh, gods, how had he not thought of that before?
It was very late, and the rain had returned, when Aldreda found Osian overseeing the armoury. She raised her eyebrows: an invitation to speak about anything he wanted.
He began with the matter before them. ‘Most crownsblood still carry an iron-infused knife, ceremonially. The rest of the crownsworn are being armed with the reserves we have, and the forges ordered to make more, alongside other weaponry.’
The Heir Apparent looked across the fairly sensible filing of their guard, each sharp glint of dark metal checked before being handed off.
‘Blood-steel,’ she said, low and dark.
They had learned from their grandfather’s stories, on his knee or at his feet before the hearth in his solar, in the castle they had been born into.
Iron bled magic faster than blood. Or so those stories said.
Their great-grandfather had certainly believed it, going so far as to drain the last of the Cyngaleg mines dry of the ore used to make blood-steel.
Putting the sorcerers he hunted to the iron knife.
The iron sword. The sharpness of an iron arrow or bolt.
Once, every crownsblood knight had been fitted with iron-infused bracers, iron-infused gloves, to defend against the wickedness of Cyngaleg sorcery.
Osian would never forget the horrid weight of his grandfather’s glove, which he had been made to hold.
Told to imagine how it might bite into a sorcerer’s skin. Their blood.
Even before he had come to Cyngalon, the thought had haunted him.
The fashion had faded after the hunts. That glove sat preserved in some hall. Thankfully Eascild had none spare, so knives and a handful of swords and several cases of crossbolts would have to do.
‘Was this Father’s request, or Gelens’?’ Aldreda asked.
‘It is a logical step.’
She knew him well enough not to press. Knew how uncomfortable this made him, even without understanding why.
He had never been able to cry to her about what he had seen.
She had been excited to hold the glove, had stuffed her hand inside, though her fingers had been too stubby to reach the end of the thumb.
For her, their grandfather’s tales had been excitingly chilling bedtime stories of brave knights and kings saving their people from monstrous magics.
It had only been much later that she had comprehended what their forebears had done.
By then, Osian had long shoved down all he had seen.
All the fear, and the heartsickness, and the doubt.
Their grandfather’s tales had always given him nightmares.
But when he had returned from Cyngalon with his father, still a boy, it was with the knowledge that the real world was far more horrific than any story.
Sometimes, the knights and the kings were the monsters.
Meilyr laid out his various plant samples and paper on his desk, and did not pull back. Allowed himself what came naturally: the feeling of the rise of the fibres, tracing back through wet wadding all the way to well-tended trees.
Life is in all things, you only have to listen for it.
His mother’s words, soft and rolling like the hush of the waves in their native tongue.
His father’s ring sat firmly on his index finger, supple Cyngaleg gold, the most comfortable weight he knew save the symbol of Y Ddraig Goch.
Both his parents had struggled, together, to raise the child who could tell from a taste what their leeks needed to grow healthier.
A child who could hear the apples that were ripe.
The fields that were dying.
Neither of them had been true weavers – only Meilyr’s maternal grandmother, taken during the final hunts when Meilyr’s mother had only been a child. Still, they had done everything they could for him.
Had they been gifted an ordinary child, they would still be alive.
There was a knock on the door. He cursed his blighted nerves for making him jump, but it was Osian, also still in his tournament attire.
‘It is late,’ the prince said, ‘but would you care to take dinner in my rooms?’
They were not alone; Osian’s knights were beyond the frame of the door.
Part of Meilyr wanted to haul him into the room and tell him everything he suspected. But there was a real chance Osian would simply suspect him, and…
Oh, to the hells with it. He grabbed the front of Osian’s tunics and pulled him inside. The prince moved – unexpectedly pliant, almost stumbling into Meilyr’s chest. Meilyr swung the door closed behind them, loudly, shocked by the surprise and askance in Osian’s eyes.
Another two steps, and they were deeper into the room. Safer.
This was a huge mistake – but if he did nothing, he would be condemned anyway. And Osian did not want him accused, even if just to safeguard their lie.
‘I think I know a way to find out if the killer is someone with access to the castle, to the gardens.’
Osian’s expression changed, focusing without a flicker of suspicion. ‘What do you mean? How?’
‘I was… I remembered some old Cyngaleg stories, merely superstitions, but some of them allude to sorcery, and I believe with my background I might be of some use.’
He waited for the doubt, for the accusation.
Instead, Osian said, ‘What do you require?’