At a signal from Captain Ruane, the sailors and soldiers closed on them, stone-faced, their hands resting on their daggers and swords. They were a mixed bunch, this crew of weathered seamen in patched coveralls and soldiers dressed in mail and boiled leather armor. As a soldier took Haille by the shoulder, Val spoke up.
“You do yourself a disservice, for he is the Prince of Antas.”
It was the first time in their travels that Val had so readily volunteered Haille’s true identity to a stranger. On a vessel of King Oean, on the edge of arrest, it made sense, but nonetheless a shiver danced across Haille’s skin. He tried to stand a bit straighter, rounding out his shoulders, pushing out his chest in hopes that even in his tattered traveling cloak and battered clothes, he might project at least some royal bearing. He felt the eyes of the men around them shift to him, Ruane and Twenge most of all.
“Prince?” Ruane echoed.
“Prince Haille Hillbourne, of Antas. We are on a journey to Karrith to reach my father.”
Twenge and Ruane exchanged a look. In the long pause that followed the ship rocked over a swell, boards groaning as if they were aching in their arrangement. The rigging twisted.
“Put them below,” Ruane finally said, nodding to Val and the others. “Bring the children to my estate room.”
Ruane was seated behind a desk, Twenge standing on his right, still with the look of a man many days at sea, his face dark with whiskers, his hair disheveled. But he had regained some air of menace and authority as he glowered down at Haille and Katlyn. Haille’s eyes tracked through the cabin. Aside from rolled maps, sextants, and a glittering sword leaning in the corner, he noted shelves of books, not unlike the oversized folios he and Katlyn knew from the Academy Library.
Aware that his time to explain was running short, Haille turned to the captain. A cup of tea rested in front of him, untouched, although Twenge drank eagerly from his own cup, both hands wrapped around it for warmth. An officer—one of the soldiers in a green cloak—set a tray with tea before Haille and Katlyn. Haille did not move to take any even though he was hungry and thirsty. Katlyn followed his lead.
Ruane sat upright, his hands resting on his hips as if he were still standing astride a shifting deck. “Well ‘Prince,’ that is no slight title our outlaw friend has claimed for you.”
“It is quite a claim, I understand, but it makes it no less true,” Haille said, noting the way Twenge scowled at him.
“Might you have evidence of this claim?” Twenge asked.
“Only my word and our story,” Haille said, then offered an abbreviated version of their story, explaining his own efforts to seek the Font of Jasmeen and leaving the city without permission. He was open about the letter his father had written to Lord Chambridge to take him in at his orphanage because of his “condition” and his “lack of character.” He mentioned the other letters he had seen that night, as well as the Karrithian Ranger who had been dressed much like the soldiers aboard the Swiftwind. He chose not to include the more fantastic elements of their story but he was sure to include their imprisonment at the hands of the Redmont clan and Val and Cody’s loyalty throughout. Adamantus he described as a loyal, clever beast, nothing more. Then of course there was the journey through Sidon. Haille’s eyes met with Katlyn’s and he sensed an understanding with her. He included their battle with the vaurgs but mentioned not the elves. When he had finished, he had explained their journey up to the very moment.
Twenge tipped his cup, swallowing the dregs of his tea. Ruane’s mouth was a straight fine line until he puffed his cheeks and blew out a stream of air between his lips.
“That is some . . . journey. And you, young lady, vouch for it.”
“Completely, sir.”
Twenge’s eyes slid sideways to his old friend while Ruane considered them, his chin resting on his hand while he took Haille’s measure.
“Victor,” Ruane said, turning to Twenge, “Am I to believe in these fearsome beasts of the woods with needles for teeth and talons for hands?”
“I saw them with my own eyes. I lost near half my men to those nightmares,” he said, grudgingly.
“And you said this swordsmith, Pathus Sumberland, recognized you immediately as your mother’s son?”
“So he said.”
“May I see the blade he gave you?”
Haille slid Elk Heart from his scabbard and handed it across the desk, hilt first. Ruane took it, looked down its blade, shook it in his hand, testing the balance, slid his finger along the blood channel then rubbed at the initials at the base of the blade with the ball of his thumb.
“You said his name was Pathus Sumberland, but these initials are ‘PA.’”
“The ‘A’ is for his wife Annette, whom he says he could accomplish nothing without.”
“Romantic,” Ruane nodded, returning the blade. “It seems authentic.”
“Is that evidence enough?” Haille asked.
“No,” Ruane said. “I’m afraid not.” Haille felt his chest clench as he took the sword back. “But it is enough for a kernel of belief, a reasonable doubt. We will interrogate Mandaly himself and see if their stories corroborate.”
“But that does not change the fact that he is an outlaw,” Twenge said, setting his cup down and holding it by the rim, his hand spread over it like a white spider.
“No, it doesn’t. And I know your oath to upholding the law, but we have oaths to the crown and kings as well. And in a time of war those loyalties are paramount.” He grimaced, the corner of his mouth screwing up into a question mark of sorts. “You said it was an old woman who predicted that your father was in grave danger.”
“Yes,” Haille said, a wave of heat passing over him, the sweat beading on his scalp. “Not a great deal to go on but it had the weight of truth, even prophecy.”
“Wives’ tales and foolishness,” Twenge scoffed.
Ruane raised his hand. “You forget yourself, old friend. You are in Karrith now. We are a bit more . . . believing in the old ways here.”
Twenge snorted and crossed his arms while he waited for Ruane to continue. The captain took his time, steepling his fingers and tapping them together arrhythmically before saying, “We’ll question Mandaly, but whatever the case young man, you, your companion, and the elk will be allowed to remain above deck. Stay in sight, away from the rails, and mind that animal of yours. Keep his antlers away from my rigging. We’re sailing for the Haines Point where Commadant Marsch is stationed. He is my superior and we’ll see what he has to say to all this.”
“It could have been worse,” Katlyn said to him later while they sat at the foot of the main mast beneath a canopy of sailcloth the sailors had erected for them.
“True, but our friends are still imprisoned in the brig and who knows what this Commandant will do.”
“What do you make of Ruane?”
Haille shrugged. “He seemed decent, like he is trying to do the right thing. But it does not help that he is old friends with Twenge.”
As they spoke, two soldiers escorted Val up from below. Despite having his wrists in chains, he wore a look of satisfaction, seeing Haille, Katlyn, and Adamantus seated where they were.
“At least Val seems pleased,” Katlyn said.
“We’re not in the brig, that must bring him some comfort,” Haille said.
But after the meeting with Ruane, Val was returned below. The captain and Twenge emerged from the estate room speaking close to one another. Twenge gave a glare in Haille’s direction before returning to the cabins. The captain crossed the deck to them, his knees popping as he bent down to their level. “It seems your stories align. Strange tales indeed.”
“Will our friends be set free?”
“That is not for me to decide and even if you are the prince, they are still outlaws.”
“Who have saved and protected us.”
“Yes, a young man—a prince—who has run away from home, whom it is my duty to protect now. Perhaps even from himself and his own rash decisions.”
They reached the Haines Point in the afternoon on the following day. It began as just a smudge on the hazy horizon but over time it transformed to a single sharp fang rising up from the Hand Sea. Here was the point in the crook of the hand where thumb met the palm. As they neared, the wind roared and whipped, the currents swirled, slapping waves against the hull. It was the confluence of elements one might expect where such a stubborn point of land ran out into the air and sea, challenging both in their own domains.
But what land it was. The point soon towered over the highest of the sails. Haille was granted some sense of its scale when he noticed the mast of other ships rocking on the leeward side of the peninsula. The rock stretched many times higher, a dagger at the sky, with gulls circling on updrafts along its face, the cliffs spotted with their nests and streaked with their droppings.
Closer still, he could make out the human-made part of the edifice. Balanced atop the cliffs, something of a crown on the crest of the ridge, was a round fortress and a single drum-like tower. It was a simple and stalwart-looking fortress and likely impenetrable. Key to its genius was a great wooden crane that reached over the curtain wall like a pelican rising from its nest. A sizable cage large enough to carry many men, even horses, rocked from the end. Ruane called it the “windlass.” “You’ll get a ride you never dreamed of today,” he said, nodding at the crane.
And they did. The Swiftwind pulled in close and anchored beside the other three galleys. There were no docks, no pier, no quay, only the waves smashing into spray along the rocks and surging in and out of cave mouths. The fortress itself had disappeared above the cliffs but the windlass and its dangling cage swung out overhead, the passenger cage growing as it winched downward. The operator guided it down, past the furled sails, and placed it squarely on the center of the deck of the Swiftwind.
No small feat, Haille thought, considering the wind, the length of cable, and the tall masts of the ship. The sailors and soldiers treated the mechanical wonder with indifference, as if long familiar with its workings. Instead they were focused on leading Haille’s friends up from the brig.
Blinking in the sunlight, their hands bound, their faces pale from riding in the darkness, Val, Cody, Chloe, and Gunther climbed the steps from below. It saddened Haille to see them treated so, but Val’s spirits were strong, or at least he made show of it, winking to Haille across the deck. Cody was as defiant as ever, lingering on the steps to gape at the windlass long enough that the soldiers had to push him forward. Chloe was next, her jaw jutting out, her eyes smoldering fire except when she looked to Gunther, when her expression would soften with pity.
A soldier swung the door on the passenger cage open and motioned for Haille and Katlyn to board. Adamantus followed, bidden or no. Next their friends were escorted aboard but remained silent, surrounded by a cadre of armed rangers. Finally, Twenge and Ruane stepped aboard. The sailors signaled the operator and the cage lifted from the deck with a jerk. Katlyn leaned into Haille as the cage rose up into the air and past the crow’s nest. Wind whipped at their clothes and turned the cage around on the cable. Haille fought his own sense of vertigo as they ascended alongside the cliffs and seagulls circled above and below them. The Swiftwind and the three ships to her port and starboard shrank to the size of toys floating in a tub.
Just when Haille thought the height too great to bear, the cage shifted, moving sideways rather than upwards, and the weathered stone wall of the fortress came into view. Mortar wept out of fissures and down the sides, the brickwork merging without seam with the cliffs below. The great arm of the windlass, all triangles and polygons of reinforced beams, lifted them over the wall.
Below them opened the bustling interior of a martial fortress. Soldiers moved to and fro on the battlements, their hands raised in salute or against the sun as the cage passed over. Longshoremen lifted heavy sacks of grains, rolled barrels of water, and stacked crates of supplies. A smithy clanged on hot iron, the smoke from his fire mingling with that from the scullery where the evening meal of fried fish was cooking. Casting a commanding presence over the entire bowl of activity was the drum tower Haille had seen from below. Unlike the rest of the fortress, which was brutal in its simplicity, the tower was ornate with flourishes, a peaked roof, and carved arabesques adjacent to fine paned windows.
The windlass lowered them to the center of the courtyard where a cadre of soldiers—infantry men armed with spears—waited for them, forming a gauntlet for them to walk between. The cage door creaked open, Ruane leading the way, Twenge behind him. A courier boy met them. Ruane handed him a scroll, sealed with wax, pressed with his signet ring.
“Take this to the Commandant,” he said. The courier saluted, turned with a quick step and ran towards the drum tower. Ruane waited for Haille, Katlyn and Adamantus to exit, then motioned for the soldiers to bring the prisoners forward. More than a few of the soldiers and longshoremen stopped in their tasks and chores and looked their way. They were a curious lot, with young people, children, and an elk with sparkling metallic antlers. A review stand had been erected on the far side of the courtyard and Haille half expected to be led to it, but instead they waited until the courier boy returned.
“The Commandant will see you immediately,” he said.
The courier leading them, they climbed a set of switchback stairs into the drum tower. The double doors at the top of the stairs had to be opened on both sides to accommodate the elk and his rack of antlers, but once inside they all waited in silence while soldiers shuffled in and out of doorways carrying messages, even furniture—mostly chairs—as if preparing to receive important guests. Finally an officer invited them forward into the chamber of the commandant.
The chambers were spacious with high ceilings and windows to match. The walls between were adorned with forest green tapestries. The western wall was without windows but the hearth sat there with a roaring fire in its mouth. To either side were bookshelves so high that rolling ladders were anchored to their frames to reach the top. Three chairs waited across from a desk behind which the commandant himself was standing. He was not tall but he had a solid build and brassy hair that stopped just short of his shoulders. He was clean shaven but for a goatee about his mouth that was shaped in such a way that he looked to be wearing a permanent scowl. His dress was official: the green tunic of his office decorated with golden epaulettes and thick looping rings of white silk sewn into his sleeves, denoting his rank.
But all the furniture, furnishings, and players on this stage were overshadowed by the work of art in the wall behind the commandant himself: a great circular window of colored glass, its stained pieces arranged to make a portrait of a young woman with golden hair, hazel eyes, ruby lips, and such beauty that even rendered in glass, she took Haille’s breath from his chest. He and the others were struck silent by the exquisite detail and the craftsmanship that made the girl’s face so lifelike. It was only after a long pause of studying it that Haille realized that the window was not yet complete. The panels of glass around the portrait were arranged to portray a series of events, presumably from the girl’s life. They showed her being christened as a babe on her name-day in a river; frolicking in a flowery meadow as a girl; attending schools; finishing her classes; then the panels depicted a dark figure, a man who appeared hunchbacked, demons who hovered about the girl, enticing her with gifts of gold, fruit, and playing a harp fashioned from bones. In the last panel, which was still incomplete, Haille could make out a gallows but the person hanged there was not yet finished. The process had continued to the very moments before they had entered: on the far end of the commandant’s desk waited the sanders, picks, chisels, and bottles of sealant and dye that were used to fashion the work itself. The scaffolding to reach the final panel sat rolled away to the corner.
It seemed that the commandant was also an artist.
“Commandant Marsch,” Captain Ruane said with a slight bow. “Let me introduce Victor Twenge, my old associate and friend of the High Council. Many a wayward sailor and soldier, even spy he has tracked down or rooted out for me over the years I have known him.”
The commandant said nothing, his eyes sliding from one person to the next under heavy lids. Haille noticed the muscles in Ruane’s throat tighten. “May I also introduce our companions and prisoners?”
“No need, I read your brief: a boy who claims to be Prince and his outlaw companions,” Marsch said with a dismissive wave of his hand, now moving his head side to side to get a better look at Val, Cody, Chloe, and Gunther. “Interesting,” he said, as a soldier placed a goblet of wine within his reach. He took it while two more were offered to Ruane and Twenge. Haille noticed Twenge drink but Ruane did not. Instead, the captain tried to talk over the awkward silence that gathered as the commandant sipped his wine, his eyes finally coming to rest on Cody, who was looking down at his feet, shifting from one foot to another.
“Might I say the work at your back is unparalleled, sir,” Ruane said.
Now the commandant nodded forcefully as if coming alive. “My daughter, the song of my heart, the light of my life, and since her death, the wellspring of my unending pain and loss.”
Twenge stopped drinking from his goblet and looked over it, stupefied. Ruane made a frown, closed his eyes, and bowed low to the commandant.
“My condolences for your grief.”
“Thank you—noted,” the commandant said, setting down his wine and stepping out from behind his desk. “Let me tell you a story, if I may. Please take a seat.” Ruane and Twenge took their places in the chairs set out for them. There was a third, perhaps for Haille, but he did not presume to take it. The commandant did not seem to notice or care. He walked along the line of prisoners, looking them over one at a time, studying each of them. Haille wondered if Marsch was giving extra scrutiny to Cody, but perhaps this was simply out of interest at his rakish good looks. Cody, for his part, continued to cast his eyes downward in a show of humility that caused both Val and Chloe to glance at each other, their eyes holding the same questioning look.
“My daughter was special. Those are the words of any proud father. And we in our everyday speech use words such as ‘beauty’ and ‘grace’ with little appreciation for their meaning. But with her, those words found their truest meaning. Until her, I realize I had moved in a world of shadows. She was a happy child, bringing joy each day to her parents, and she grew into a fine young woman, sharp of mind, kind at heart, and quick with wit. It will come as no surprise to you when I tell you that she had more than enough suitors, high and low born. But few interested her, few could woo her, for she had other more noble pursuits and only the highest standards for herself.”
He made his way back to the desk, now turning his back on them to gaze upon the likeness of his daughter who looked out over all of them. “But into each sunny day, a cloud must come. As you can see from the panels here, a demon came into her life. He took the guise of a comely young man, but I have depicted him as he was in his heart, for truly he was a fiend of the underworld. Purity attracts evil, as if the darkness, out of spite, cannot stand to let such a light exist without marring it. Oh and did he so mar her. She kept him a secret, lying to me—her loving father—and her mother. She met him at night. Spells he wove around her—for what else could make her choose dishonesty, choose him? But so she did, compromising herself, giving him . . . carnal knowledge of herself.”
He turned his face from the window to the floor and made no effort to hide the tears that wet his cheeks. Katlyn clutched her hands over her heart. Haille himself felt frozen by this man’s testimony, this show of vulnerability. This was not the meeting he had expected.
“Like all demons though, the bastard fled and in time she could not hide that she was with child. I confronted her. She claimed to be in love. She claimed that he had pledged to return. But who knows if the demon had even shared his true name with her, fool that she had been.”
He took a long pause now, as if to gather himself, to steel himself for the ending of his story. He met their eyes once more, roving from Ruane to Twenge, to Haille and Katlyn, his back squared, his arms folded over his chest. “As a man of honor I was left with only one course of action. I had to preserve the name of my house, if not the seed.”
“You bastard!” Cody blurted, stunning them all. He charged from the back of the room but was caught by two soldiers who restrained him. Confusion showed on everyone’s face, save the commandant’s, who curled his lip in disgust.
“You show yourself so readily,” he said.
“You are a monster!” Cody spat, fighting against the soldiers.
“Who is the man and who is the monster? The man who defiles another’s house or the man who purifies it with the sword.”
“That was not purifying. It was murder. You had no right. I was coming back!”
The commandant scoffed, “You had no right to her. She was my daughter, my property. How callous, how bold, how shameless you are to even go by the same name as you did then, Cody Youngblood.”
Chloe met Val’s eyes in alarm. Val stepped forward. “Honorable commandant,” he said, the words cracking as if catching in his throat. “This man, my man, has a reputation for indiscretions, but he is my man and I will vouch for him.”
The commandant shrugged, took a sip of his wine, and said, “Then you will share his fate.”
But Cody had fallen to his knees, the cocksure rogue they knew was gone, replaced by a weeping man struggling to speak. “You had no right to kill her, or my child.”
“The bastard child you mean? A demon’s spawn. How many bastards do you have running about in the realm?” Marsch asked.
Cody gave no response but to sob, wiping his face with his bound hands. Ruane cleared his throat, his own face white. The meeting had moved far beyond his own control. Twenge’s face was equally blanched. “Commandant, I . . . I had no knowledge of this or that the man we held here was the same man who . . . led you to . . . .” Ruane’s voice trailed off for a moment before he recovered. “I hesitate to trouble you with anything in your grief. Perhaps we might wait until your grief is less, to decide . . . .”
“My grief will never be less,” the commandant roared, his face turning red. “I am grief.” Marsch turned to Haille, regarding him as one might a child playing some game of pretend. “What proof do you have of this claim to be prince, boy?”
“My words. My sword,” Haille said.
“Not good enough.” Marsch snapped his fingers, bringing his guards to attention. “Put them all in the prison. We’ll execute Youngblood at first light.”
“I must protest!” Val said, stepping forward only to be seized by the guards around him.
“And this one who vouches for Youngblood, we’ll kill him too.”
“This is madness!” Chloe yelled.
“Quiet, woman, or you can join them,” Marsch added, then turned his back on them all to gaze at his daughter, forever captured in brittle, glowing glass.