Feilan had to admit to being slightly worried when he still hadn’t heard back from Freyja, the moon had waned to almost full gloam, and Noura’s suspicious looks had become outright glaring. She didn’t bother demanding to know where the freedom tattoos were, or threaten to cut his stones off or sabotage their alliance. She didn’t have to. He was almost out of time.
He was sitting by Torben in the pavilion on their last free evening before the monster hunt would begin again. He had parchment on the bench beside him, his latest letter to Freyja inked with only a few runes of the beggar’s script before he’d stopped to think.
He rolled the collection of beads he’d had back from Siftar between the fingers of one hand, ivory and jade and various agates, different every time to match the beads Feilan had sent so that the questionably-reliable messenger couldn’t make substitutions. The beads confirmed Freyja had safely received his prior messages; she’d acknowledged his requests, and her lack of further reply implied she was working on them.
Torben was not quite at full strength, but he had made a truly miraculous recovery under the constant administration of Remy’s herbal salves and potions. Micah had picked out his stitches a few days before, the same service he’d performed for Noura, his steady hands tick-ticking down the stitched silk with a sharp scalpel.
The warrior rucked up his shirt and touched the reddened seams of the brutal injury that had almost killed him, stroking his fingers along his newest scars almost reverentially. ‘Gave a blood sacrifice to that thing, didn’t I?’
‘Its turn, tomorrow night.’
Torben said nothing for a moment, his attention fixed on his torso. Finally, he said, softly, ‘Might not beat it, Little Wolf.’
‘You will,’ Feilan replied automatically, then bit his tongue. He’d never heard Torben express doubt: it was Vaer kneejerk to try to silence it. ‘It was bigger than we expected,’ he ventured.
‘Faster. Nothing that big has any right to move that fast. And that armour…’ Torben dropped his hand and straightened. ‘I’ll bring out my spear, it’s got a bit more reach on it. You might have to take the head, though.’
He meant he might be so damaged in the killing of it that Feilan would have to be the one to ward Micah off and carry its decapitated head in to claim the prize. Feilan debated, then said, ‘Thunder Bear, if you’re done in by it, Adeline’s done in.’
‘I’d be cursed sorry about that,’ Torben said. ‘I like the kid.’
A scuff alerted Feilan to a presence behind them; he turned to see Remy hesitating at the entrance to the pavilion. He was wearing an odd expression. Feilan hoped he hadn’t overheard them – his Vaer was good enough that he’d have been thoroughly discouraged.
‘Getting dragged off to bed again, are we?’ Torben said acerbically.
Micah had been sternly blocking Torben’s potential partners from his room, on the grounds that it would be beyond foolish to ruin the effect of their tedious mutual sequestering when Darya was thoroughly convinced Micah had Torben’s cock wrapped round his little finger – rather wince-inducing imagery – and was thus in more control of him than Feilan was.
The logic didn’t make Torben any happier about being denied bedplay now he was strong enough to manage it, especially because Micah’s usual attire – or at least the attire he chose to wear while pretending to a torrid affair – featured tight leather vests that not only showed off his muscular arms and shoulders and sleekly narrow waist, but which laced, not at front or the sides as was typical, but crisscross right up his long, lithe spine. Even Remy looked twice, and Torben was left, in what Feilan firmly believed was subtle vengeance well-earned and well-served, somewhat surly about it.
Remy said, ‘Feilan, you have a visitor, and Uncle is trying very hard to turn her away.’
‘Njorda’s tits.’ Feilan leapt up, snatching the fruitless letter to fold away into his belt-pouch. ‘Stay here,’ he ordered Torben. ‘You’re still resting.’
Torben, scowling, banged the stone bench with a loose fist, because he was constantly being told, by Feilan, by Micah, by Noura, that he wasn’t allowed to do things, and there was only so long a Vaer warrior could take that. And truly, he had healed. Micah was merely being cautious, strangely fussy for such a cool-tempered man.
‘Walk back to Third Hill,’ Feilan amended. ‘We’ll meet you there.’ He slipped back into Vaer. ‘Thunder Bear—’
‘Bugger off with the rallying cry, Little Wolf, it’ll be fine.’
Feilan raised his palms in defeat and strode off with Remy.
‘I sent Rosa for Adeline, too,’ Remy told him as they hurried up the arcade. ‘In case we need the queen’s authority.’
‘Do you know who it is?’ Feilan said. ‘Not Freyja.’
‘Your tall friend, she stood sentry on the gate? You spilled ale on her.’
‘Gytha,’ Feilan said.
In the wide forecourt before First Hill, Gytha was facing a surprising number of the liveried Seven Hills guardsmen, a solid proportion of the sixteen usually on duty at any one time, their stone-faced captain, and even a few muscular stable hands who must have been called over for show.
Uncle Bertrand, a glowering Hughard at his shoulder, was explaining that strange lone Vaer were not welcome at Seven Hills, for reasons he was sure she would understand, and they would not be extending guest right. She was giving him her best blank look, but she lit up when she saw Feilan arrive.
‘Brother!’ she said.
‘Little sister,’ Feilan said immediately and, with a delight that was not at all feigned, opened his arms wide.
She obligingly came in for the fake brotherly hug. She topped him by a solid few inches; she wasn’t much shorter than Torben. He had to reach up to demonstratively tug at one of her braids.
She muttered, ‘You think you’re hilarious.’
‘Tell me you’ve brought what I need.’
‘Yes,’ she said, and grunted when he squeezed her even tighter. He hadn’t quite let himself notice how worried he’d been growing. ‘But I also have news I need to tell you privately.’
He nodded, and turned with a cheerful smile to Remy. ‘You remember my sister from Siftar.’
Remy looked between the two of them and then said, ‘Of course,’ and suffered a boisterous hug from his husband’s reputed younger sister.
‘I must be mistaken, I thought you were Freyja Anjasdottir’s only child.’ Uncle Bertrand’s doubt slithered behind his jolly smile, just present enough to make Hughard and the guard captain bristle further, perhaps without even understanding why.
‘Only son,’ Feilan said, while Gytha said, ‘Half-sister.’
‘Both,’ Feilan said mildly. ‘Remy?’
‘I am very pleased to extend you guest right, Gytha,’ Prince Renart of Seven Hills said, clasping Gytha’s forearm and offering a formal bow over it.
Bertrand looked mildly distraught. ‘Oh, dear! Why did you not say who she was before, Renart, instead of scurrying off to fetch your husband and leaving us to embarrass ourselves by being rude?’
‘I knew he would be so happy to see a familiar face. I couldn’t wait a single moment to delay his pleasure.’
Feilan looked happy.
‘Careless,’ Hughard adjudged. ‘And as thoughtless as ever, to us and to your husband’s guest.’
It had been some time since his family’s scathing judgements had held power over Remy. He merely affected a polite expression of contrition, and otherwise ignored his uncle and brother.
Adeline arrived then, and professed herself delighted to meet Feilan’s sister, which made Bertrand narrow his eyes – he was obviously wondering why she’d not had the honour of being introduced to her new uncle’s sister back in Siftar. Feilan linked an arm with Gytha, and the other with Remy, and whisked them away.
At Third Hill East, Torben was waiting on his bed with the door open. He nodded to Gytha, who he knew only by sight, since she was of eastern Vaer fishing village stock. Feilan expected no trouble there; ironically enough, Vaer were much more understanding about women like Gytha, who owned their womanliness, than men like Feilan, who refused to.
Torben stood as if to follow them to Remy’s room. He was moving well, Feilan noted, even after walking about for much of the day, and he’d stopped touching his side.
‘In here,’ he said, waving Torben back from his door and leading the others in. He hadn’t forgotten he and Remy had been overheard talking about the goat in Remy’s room.
He lowered the covers on the high narrow window slits, blocking the light, immediately increasing the stuffiness of the small room, but hopefully cutting off any eavesdroppers. He still wasn’t convinced someone standing outside the wall could hear quiet conversations even with the slits uncovered.
Satisfied, he asked, ‘Where’s the tattooist?’
‘Under guard in the town.’
Feilan raised his brows. ‘A prisoner? He won’t ink the freedom tattoos correctly if he’s being forced.’
‘She is well paid and willing. I left her with Eirikr and Helle, safely out of the way until I knew the lie of the land here.’
He was reminded, by the meaningful look she attached to her words, and the very fact that she had brought two more of Freyja’s contracted guards with her, that she’d warned him she had private news. Without overt reaction, he turned to Torben and Remy.
‘Go find Micah,’ he told the former, ‘and go together to the cave. Remy, you’ll need to get the message to Noura that she’s to bring Aminah as soon as she can slip her out from their master’s claws.’
Torben turned to leave immediately, but Remy hesitated; it was plain he realised both errands were easily accomplished by one. But, at Feilan’s reassuring smile, he nodded and left, firmly closing the door behind him so the latch caught properly.
Feilan got Gytha to scoot up the bed with him, so they were both resting their backs against the carved headboard, as far from both the slits and the door as possible. The servant-summoning rope with its gilt braid hung by Feilan’s face, and he tucked it behind the headboard, quashing a memory of doing the same as Remy gripped the posts on their matching bed, spine taut, head thrown back.
Gytha handed him three beads.
Polished and carved iron: trust the bearer. He didn’t have time to be surprised by the need for that code, because of the other two messages.
Amber set within lacy silver: I am safe.
Jet riven with a white flaw: stay away.
He looked up, brows raised high. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Olvar has come to Siftar.’
Olvar Korisson. Torben’s Snorri Snorrisson. The baby emperor with six towns already under his rule, and looking to expand.
‘Takeover or alliance?’ He braced for the answer.
Gytha rocked her hand back and forth, screwing up her freckled nose eloquently. ‘He came in with his escort unarmed, just like anyone else, but he also has half an army camped in the field outside the overlander gate.’
‘May fleas infest them,’ Feilan swore.
‘Apparently,’ she said, ‘there’s an invasion threatening from the east.’
Feilan said, ‘Not imminently,’ quite grudgingly, because he saw Olvar’s wisdom in preparing for its inevitable arrival, particularly after Noura’s stubbornly offhand account. Disciplined devil-creatures. That made them the categorical opposite of Vaer bersverdar – except for rare instances like the men under Olvar’s iron command. That didn’t mean he had to like the thought of Siftar overrun.
‘He wants the connections and resources – the silver – Freyja’s trading network will give him, and her reputation and influence yoked to his, and he’s no longer allowing an alliance to be optional.’
‘There’s a word for not taking a no.’
Gytha shook her head. ‘She said to tell you she must have the Riverlands trade opened. That connection tips the balance. She’ll still… Well, he’s too strong, Feilan, she’ll still marry the man, but add that pebble to her stack of stones, and she holds the balance of power when they sign their marriage pact. If he is an emperor, she will be in truth his empress. But she must have word from you by the end of the moon-gloam that you have secured the Riverlands for her.’
Feilan held silent. He knew Freyja, and he knew the message in the words Gytha had faithfully relayed. If he did not know for rock-hard sure that he could win the monster hunt for Adeline, Freyja was telling him to ally to Bertrand instead. His gratitude for Vaer help should make access to the Riverlands beyond the Seven Hills bottleneck not only guaranteed, but only lightly tithed.
In fact, she likely expected him to change allegiances regardless of his chances of winning, given they’d both suspected from the very start that Bertrand would not truly give up his power over Adeline. Feilan knew he wouldn’t, actually, now he’d seen how habituated Bertrand was to manipulating the person on the throne.
For Freyja to break a golden promise, to go back on her almost-wistful desire to support the little queen: she was in the tightest of corners back in Siftar. If she must surrender her position as merchant queen, she at least wanted to do it for no less of a trade than an imperial crown.
He looked again at the beads he was rolling about his palm: I am safe but do not come home. He clenched his fist closed.
Gytha took a folded packet of parchment from her leather pouch, and handed it over. ‘She said you can use this to force his hand.’
Feilan unfolded it. Coming straight from Gytha’s hand – trust the bearer – it wasn’t ciphered. Freyja had done as he had asked, and found one of the crewmen involved in Queen Leonore’s kidnapping all those years ago. People vanished and died and got lost. His offsiders must have worked the network to its limits to find the last man alive who had seen the queen step from his clinker to Bertrand’s riverboat at the rendezvous.
Feilan had been right. The Vaer traders had accepted the ransom, and safely returned the queen untouched and well-fed. It was on the riverboat back to Seven Hill’s port that the treachery had occurred.
The second lot of parchment enclosed within the first was so convenient as to seem falsified, if Feilan hadn’t trusted Freyja and the width and breadth of his own information network and the ability of his people to thrum its web and bring forth its little spiders. The testimony was in a monk’s hand, the ink faded, but clearly signed and stamped by the abbot of a southern monastery.
Years before, the abbot’s clerk had recorded the rambling words of a child who’d been crew on that little riverboat. He’d only been eight or so, only a little older than young Prince Renart. He had seen a play of events he did not understand, but was only too glad to spill out to the man who had given him refuge, half frightened confession, half traumatised narration.
He had seen the man in charge of the expedition approach the woman with the kind eyes and the rich red cloak, in the aft of the riverboat, away from all eyes, except his, because he had crawled behind the water barrels to retrieve a fallen hook, and the man and the woman didn’t know he was there.
The man had spoken in a low voice, hand around the woman’s elbow. She had tried to pull away. His grip had tightened. His voice had risen. He had said, Why so much pride? They all had you. What’s one more?
He put his other hand to her waist, tugging. She slapped him and said, The barbarians had more honour than you. I will tell your brother you did this. His eyes turned cold and flat like the stare of a dead fish and he put his hands around her throat to stop her threats. She struggled and fought and clawed, to no avail.
It had ended with Bertrand’s face bruised and scratched and his brother’s wife’s body tipped overboard, sinking into the deepest waters with weighty chains about her ankles and barely a splash to mark her passing. It had ended with a riverboat burning, and a small family crew brutally set upon by mercenary guards, and a young boy leaping overboard, almost drowning, and fleeing to foreign sanctuary before more soldiers could come searching for him.
Feilan read the sickening contents, understanding that Freyja intended for him to use this, not to obtain years-late justice for a murdered queen, a murdered crew, an orphaned boy, and orphaned royal siblings, but to cosy up with two-faced, scheming Uncle Bertrand, make him grateful for not just Vaer help but Vaer silence, and force him into the supplicant position for a serthing trade deal.
He snarled an obscenity – rassragi serthi serth – roughly translatable as ‘Arsefucked double-buggering fuck,’ and thumped the back of his head into the wall.
Gytha was wisely silent, though she did lay her upturned palm on her knee. He absently took her hand, deep in thought.
Finally, he bowed his head.
When he’d first written to Freyja, he hadn’t known any better: he’d thought uncovering evidence about the suspicious loss of Leonore would be enough to dislodge Bertrand. He had had no idea how deep he’d worked his slimy tentacles into the minds of the Nivardus siblings. These incriminating but circumstantial and too-convenient letters would never be enough to pry him loose, this persuasive man used to submission from the rest of the family, used to holding the reins and having everything his own way, used to being listened to and trusted and believed.
Freyja was correct to assume Feilan would have to use them for blackmail, not justice.
Even then, they’d only go so far in corralling him. Bertrand wouldn’t want to entertain a new, forced, alliance when he knew his bloc had a better than even chance of winning in its own right. He might deign to make a trade deal once he was regent, but not on terms favourable to the barbarians who’d made locking down his regency more difficult than it had to be.
But if Feilan’s alliance won, he’d have the carrot of Remy’s regency – he’d have to make himself, not Torben, the winner to earn that juicy carrot – as well as the stick of this blackmail to obtain the best possible trade conditions for Freyja. Each piece might not work on its own: together, they were golden.
And so, Feilan’s best ploy was to continue along the same path he was already on, with an added little twist to the plan.
He supposed he should take the two letters to the uncle and make the bargain that his win tomorrow night would seal. For now, he went next door and folded the thick packet of parchment into the false bottom of his trunk, where Vaer like him would normally hide gemstones and hacksilver.
The others would gather in the cave soon. He would deal with that first.