Evenings lingered now, the lengthening light falling mellow across the hills and burnishing the pink-stoned arches of the arcade, though Feilan noted that the mist had risen as usual in the hollows and dips lower down. It was thinner than it had been at the last new moon, but it should still be enough.
Gytha had taken the back path, running along past the skeps, quiet now in the dimming, cooling air, until she was the barest blot in the distance before curving out of sight towards the town. She’d gone to fetch up the tattooist.
Feilan sat in the last of the sunshine at the edge of the little flat area before the cave’s overhang, where he’d once broken fast with Adeline and Remy. He stared out at the golden view, musing. He turned the letter he’d started writing to Freyja over and over in his hands. The few runes he’d written earlier were moot now. He needed to start it over.
He soon found instead that he was playing with the ring, his own ring, that he had gifted to himself, on Remy’s behalf, and worn all this time, on Remy’s behalf. He held it up so the dull metal caught a last glint from the westering sun, rays angling in from behind the overhang. It flashed gold back at him.
A warrior’s honour was measured out in hacksilver, but a trader’s reputation was worth solid gold. Freyja was bartering it away for an empress’s diadem, and the fact that Olvar had left her no choice did not take the bitter taste from her son’s mouth.
He heard overhead the telltale footsteps – one set loud and unfaltering, accompanied by the whisper of the second – and Torben and Micah came down the narrow path off the arcade. He tucked the abortive letter away. He hadn’t thought of any words yet.
‘You didn’t come for the nightmeal,’ Torben pointlessly informed him. ‘Told ’em you were too busy talking to your sister.’
He handed over a mug of the small ale they drank here, and a hunk of dark bread. Feilan picked at it until Noura arrived, Aminah looking shy and heartbreakingly hopeful beside her.
‘I told him it was women’s troubles, that always makes that weak turd turn a funny colour.’ Noura looked about. ‘Where’s our freedom marks?’
Feilan pointed down the hill. It was nothing but shadows now, but the shadows were moving, Gytha leading her little troop up towards them.
He’d been so looking forward to this, the fulfilled promise to Noura, the gift for Micah, laying out his clever plan to the admiration of his husband, though admittedly the quibbling of the others. Now it was all in the service of someone else’s victory.
He hissed through his teeth. ‘Where’s Remy?’
He needed him here, because he had an important role to play tomorrow night, but he didn’t want him here. The guilt would try to overwhelm him if he was subjected to his husband’s trusting, loving gaze.
‘Trapped talking to his uncle,’ Torben said.
That meant being browbeaten. Feilan grimaced. He couldn’t help him now.
The tattooist, it transpired, was of the advanced age which usually waited for Remy to come calling rather than climb the hill. Gytha and her two fellow Siftar sentries were working together to push her up the grassy slope in a wheeled chair. This proved too much long before they’d approached the overhang, so Torben and Noura went down the hill to help carry both old woman and chair over the uneven tufts and tussocks.
Entering into Remy’s cave usually flashed blue and green across Feilan’s vision when the mingled scents of his potions and salves and drying bundles of herbs first struck him. This evening, a pungent, acrid odour greeted him, along with a burst of strong but dull yellow the shade of mustard seeds. He shook his head to clear the reek from nose and eyes. Remy must have been mixing up something new this morning, before he’d ridden out on his usual rounds, some remedy powerful enough for its scent to have lingered in the still, cool air of the cave.
Since he still hadn’t come, it was left to Micah to rummage through Remy’s neat arrangements and fetch clean cloths and bowls of water to the main workbench. Feilan shifted lamps closer and lit them from their strikers, making sure the tattooist would have no complaints about visibility when she did her delicate, essential work.
Gytha’s group arrived at the cave mouth. All three Siftar sentries were visibly red-faced, even though Torben and Noura had taken the burdens halfway up the last slope; Siftar was very flat. Torben cheerily slung the old woman from his back into the chair, a move that should have made her swear at him and instead made her give a shout of delight, and Noura pushed her over. Gytha put a satchel of equipment on the bench, and went to loiter with the other two sentries.
The tattooist was deeply wrinkled and almost bald under a southern cap, and probably the oldest woman Feilan could remember meeting, which gave him some concern until he watched her lay out her needles and ink and saw that her hands were as steady as Micah’s.
Her age was their advantage. The few tattooists versed in the secrets of the freedom tattoos were generally not allowed to leave the job, just as the artisans on Ysthera were wedded to their own secretive work to keep those innovative techniques, or perhaps even magic, from common knowledge.
But this woman, introduced as Tyra-of-Tyr, must have been allowed to retire, because her advanced age, and probably her womanhood, meant her masters had assumed she was no longer capable of sharing the technique with forgers. They obviously had not expected her to turn to forgery herself.
‘How long since you stopped work?’ he asked, using Midlands.
‘Eight years,’ she said, her voice low and peaty. Then she grinned and made her hands quiver and her voice quaver. ‘Too old for it, dearie. Barely in my right mind.’
Noura had already directed Aminah onto a low stool set before Tyra’s chair, but she paused at that news. The designs of the freedom tattoos changed both by year and location. ‘Then the freedom mark will be eight years out of date.’
Feilan, also aware of this, gave Gytha a sharp look in lieu of Freyja and his clerks who should have known better.
‘And my stamp of authority will reflect that: you will have been free for eight years. In fact, you will wear the design of ten years ago, for that is when I was last in the north.’
‘But the tattoos won’t look ten years old,’ Feilan said.
She glared. ‘Scrog-for-brains, do I look like I was born yesterday?’
‘You look like you were born five hundred years ago,’ Torben said cheerfully, provoking her big, gummy smile again.
Noura slapped the workbench for their attention. ‘My master will attest he did not free us ten years ago.’
‘My sweet child,’ the old woman said. ‘You have been a slave too long. He will not be your master, and he can say as he likes, and you will have an unforgeable freedom mark and the matching unforgeable stamp which both aver you were freed ten years ago in Aldhelm. And if someone bothers to check that, they will discover that the tattooist providing said marks and stamps was indeed in Aldhelm ten years ago, freeing an entire clutch of slaves who helped take the town for Olvar the Bold.’
The name made Feilan flinch. He glanced over at the cave entrance. It was dusk out there now, a soft settling into the long summer evening. Remy should have finished up the interminable family supper, and come.
Tyra’s peaty voice went on. ‘It will be indisputable. You may, in fact, threaten to turn a case on him for attempting to enslave two freewomen with impeccable papers, yes? And I might further suggest that you do not in fact have to stay about and wait for him to make his protests. You will be free. You may walk down the hill with me and my escort this very night, and never look back.’
Feilan held up a finger, opening his mouth. He closed it again.
‘Aminah will do that,’ Noura said. ‘I will wait.’
Torben cast Feilan a look which was probably meant to be subtle, to Micah’s quiet amusement. Feilan shook his head to the silent, surprisingly canny, suggestion. He wanted Noura’s willing assistance tomorrow night. That meant he had to risk letting her receive her prize tonight.
Noura snorted at their silent interchange. She leaned on the workbench by her daughter. ‘Hold my hand, sweetheart,’ she said. ‘Squeeze when it hurts, but do not move.’
Tyra shifted the lamps about, and began to stir pinches and spoons of this and that powder from her pouch into her inkpots. Feilan eyed her procedure with some interest. It seemed the technique was in the ink, not the needle, for the set of silver implements looked normal. Tyra glared at him until he backed off. The secret would stay intact.
He joined Gytha and surveyed the evening. A low-wicked glow was cast overhead by the lamps of the arcade, a sparse trail once it passed Fourth Hill East, the furthermost arc of the Seven Hill guard patrol.
‘Where’s Remy?’ he asked again, looking about the cave as if he thought his husband might be skulking in the dark alcove to the rear.
‘Off in a snit because he’s finally realised you fully intend to fuck him for a month and then sertha af back to Siftar without even a glance over your shoulder,’ Torben suggested.
‘Bugger off, Thunder Bear.’ Feilan looked from the smirking Torben to the – it had to be said – rather judgemental faces of Noura and Micah, and switched back to Midlands. ‘It’s what he asked me to do. What? I told him I’d visit if he wanted.’
Now not only did his three regular companions look sceptical, but so did Tyra, and the three Siftar sentries, attention snared at the prospect of gossip. The only one who didn’t was Aminah, and that was probably because she’d been told not to move her face while the needles danced by her eye.
Feilan waved a hand in lieu of words. He could hardly explain he was about to betray Remy and his husband wouldn’t ever want to see him again.
‘That man thinks the sun shines out of your veritable arse,’ Torben told him.
‘How veritably poetic of you.’
‘Oh, Feilan,’ Gytha said reproachfully. ‘Learn to recognise when someone’s in love with you, would you?’
‘Remy’s just infatu—’ Feilan stopped. ‘Ah. Gytha…’
‘Not me, you jolterhead, Meik!’
Feilan, relieved, scoffed. ‘I think you’re being girly about a casual bedmates situation.’
‘I think you’re being a Vaer man about an emotional connection situation.’
‘I’m not a Vaer man.’
‘What’s wrong with being a Vaer man?’ Torben abruptly demanded.
As an effective distraction, Torben could have done worse. Feilan smiled and said, ‘Since we don’t have an entire moon-turn in which to answer that question—’
‘No, I’m asking. What’s so wrong about it?’ Torben said. ‘What’s wrong with valuing strength, and having a code of honour, and wanting to protect your family?’
‘Because you only value one kind of strength, defined so precisely that most Vaer men end up feeling weak and pretending otherwise, which is dangerous for everyone, and your code of honour is so rigid it ostracises everyone outside of a very narrow mould even as it traps you in there, and protecting your family – who you barely know – comes at the cost of other people’s families?’
Torben seemed taken aback by how fast Feilan had trotted out his answer. He looked about and saw no disagreement on anyone else’s face. ‘Whatever. None of you are real men anyway. Rufran does a girl’s job, you literally don’t have the balls for it’ – directed to Micah, of course – ‘and you’re…you.’
Abruptly very tired, Feilan said, ‘Just call me rassragr, Tryggvi, you know you want to.’
Torben checked, grimaced, then turned his shoulder to nod to Noura. ‘You do all right.’
‘Not a compliment,’ she said.
Feilan threw up his hands. ‘Drop it, Torben. I’ll tell you three the plan, and tell it to Remy later. We four go into the field as at last new moon. This time, we hunt the monster. It won’t come till after full dark, but if it does, we merely drive it away from the uncle’s bloc. As soon as the mist is thick enough to thoroughly disguise our movements, you, Micah, will circle to First Hill, slither your way past the holes in the guardsmen’s patrols, and hide yourself within the warrior stables, which is empty since all the champions insisted on secure quarters. You will be underneath the spectators. Meanwhile, under Remy’s instruction, Adeline will present a gift to Prince Afzal.’
Feilan pointed to the wicker chair Tyra sat in to perform her artistry, indicating in turn its large iron wheels, that could be propelled by hands, and its handles, that could be propelled by a willing helper.
‘It’s too big for him, I know,’ he said. ‘It’s more the concept of it, than this particular form. The point is, Adeline will want to show it to Afzal straight away, so he will have to be brought down the stairs. And then Adeline will want to see him enjoy it, so they’ll wheel off down the arcade, at great and heedless speed, as children delight in doing. And Lady Darya must allow it, because Remy and Rosa will be there too, to coo over this lovely, special friendship and the alliance it is inevitably leading to.’
‘And you think she will assume I am out on the hunting ground,’ Micah said, slowly. ‘She will have seen me depart with her own eyes, after watching me supposedly manipulate this one—’ He tipped his head at Torben. ‘—from new moon to new moon. She believes my entire plan revolves around using him to win, not this risky, reckless, foolishness.’
Feilan paused. He was now in a bind, were he to admit it to the others: the plan as it stood relied very much on Darya believing the alliance a sham, Micah working to his own ends, ultimately hers. Yet Feilan now also had to convince Uncle Bertrand the very same alliance was so solid that he was better off yielding to the carrot-and-stick of Freyja’s offer rather than brazening it out and risking all on his own bloc and his family’s blind faith.
He shook his head. ‘Hear me out before you start badgering me. She may come down with Afzal, to see the gift with her own eyes. That makes it easier for you. She will certainly come down when her man tells her the children have been gone too long. She may or may not keep her bodyguards to hand, but Afzal’s throat will not be to hand.’
And, since the additional part of the plan was that Remy would slip away to take custody of the children and hide them away safely – not in his cave or his room – it would have the benefit of keeping Adeline away from Bertrand in the fraught moment that he saw her champion carrying in the monster’s head, granting her the blessing of their goddess for sole rule in her own right.
That had been the bright idea, anyway. Now, of course, Feilan would have sought Bertrand out before then, eyewitness testimonies in one hand, strong champions’ alliance in the other, a golden offer on his perfidious lips. He couldn’t keep the wince off his face.
‘And so I step out of the warrior quarters and end her.’
‘Yes,’ Feilan said. ‘However you like. And then you run back around past the cave and find us out on the field in the mist, because that thing is going to be serthing hard to kill and we have to get it done right then.’
‘Not so hard that the three of you could not have already done it without me,’ Micah pointed out.
‘Or all three of us are already dead,’ Noura called helpfully from by her daughter. ‘And the other alliance has it.’
‘And who is to say this wild plan with an obscene reliance on luck and impeccable timing is not at all for my benefit, but to remove the risk of me taking the head by simply removing me from the hunt?’
Feilan shrugged. ‘Who’s to say you are not actually manipulating my friend, and all of us, into thinking you’re on our side when you do fully intend to hand that head to Darya?’
‘He’d be coming through on our supposed passion if he really wanted to manipulate me,’ Torben said, half a complaint.
‘I’m going to leave the glaring fact that you just defended your faithful nurse lying there before us in all its obviousness,’ Feilan said, not without a smile. ‘There’s other ways than sex to manipulate people.’ Micah was looking both proud and put upon. ‘Micah, you’re either committing to this alliance or you’re not. Now is the time to choose. Both ways are a risk. You know what you’re up against if you go it alone, both us and the uncle’s bloc. Do you really think your chance of winning alone, merely to keep Afzal in his prison, is higher than your chance of freeing him my way?’
‘I know my abilities,’ Micah said haughtily. ‘I have never been the one who needed this alliance.’
‘Finished,’ Tyra called out. She brushed a gentle hand over Aminah’s forehead. ‘It will be red for a time. That’s the only giveaway.’
They gathered to admire Aminah’s new freedom. The unblinking eye of the slave tattoo had been rendered closed via abstract and ornate lines of a peculiar silver hue, reminiscent of old stretch marks or of the smell of lavender.
While Aminah and Noura exchanged places, Feilan looked longingly at Remy’s jars and bottles, the glass aglint in the lamplight. He was positive one of the salves on those shelves would take the redness away without damaging new ink. He wished again Remy was there, and again was relieved he wasn’t – and slightly puzzled.
He glanced towards the mouth of the cave. The nightmeal had to be long over.
Noura turned her face aside just as Tyra was about to press the first needle in. ‘Wait,’ she said. ‘I can explain Aminah’s absence with more of the women’s troubles horseshit. But I can’t do that with a freedom mark on my face. I should wait till after tomorrow night.’
Tyra tutted disapprovingly. ‘I haven’t been paid well enough to hang about at your convenience.’
Feilan suspected she’d been paid well enough to hang about anywhere she liked for the remainder of her days. Further, it was the perfect excuse to hold Noura obliged to him until he had what he needed from her.
He said, ‘I have an idea about that. Get the tattoo.’
Noura held herself stiffly, staring at him. Then she nodded, and tilted her cheek back towards Tyra.
Feilan looked to the mouth of the cave again and found Aminah standing by his side, waiting for his attention, as if, disturbingly, he were her master.
It would take her a little time, he thought, to fully embrace her new condition.
‘I want to thank you,’ she said. ‘This is very kind of you.’
‘I’m not kind,’ he said, ‘just practical. It works better if we don’t need to get Tyra back up here.’
She ignored him. ‘Mama always told me she would find a way to free me. I don’t think she ever once planned to free herself, too.’
‘She might die tomorrow night,’ Feilan said bluntly. ‘That’s the payment.’
Aminah nodded, unperturbed. ‘We both know the cost. If she must die, she’d rather die free, knowing I’m free and safe, than any other outcome.’ She started away, then turned back and said, quietly, ‘She’ll go after our former master.’
Feilan felt not a whit of surprise, and only one concern. ‘Before or after the hunt?’
‘After. If she lives through that, she’ll see him dead before she joins me in the town.’
‘You seem sure, but…’
‘She could never kill him while she was his slave. You know what they do to slaves – the entire household of slaves – when a master is murdered. But now she’s free. It’s just one private citizen killing another.’ Aminah looked up at him. ‘He’s the closest thing to a father I ever had.’
Feilan blinked. ‘Are you asking me to save him?’
‘No,’ she said, and spat on the floor. ‘I’m telling you why he deserves to die. And I’m telling you to help her get away after, or I’ll cut your stones off.’
‘Thanks, I appreciate a warning.’ He gave a short bow. ‘At your disposal.’
They exchanged smiles before he turned away. This time it was Micah who startled him by a sudden appearance at his side. He could only console himself that the assassin could have already killed him, if that had been the intention.
‘I have chosen,’ Micah said. He held out his hand, cool and steady, and they gripped forearms in the formal clasp. ‘Although there is an outrageous amount of running involved in this plan.’
‘Only for you,’ Feilan said. ‘You can’t do it?’
‘Do not presume to tell me what I am or am not capable of,’ Micah said, though without his usual ice. ‘I take it I do not have to warn you what I will do to you and your testicles should this go wrong.’
‘Mother and daughter already have claim on mine,’ Feilan said. ‘You can have Torben’s.’
‘Hoi!’ bellowed Torben, almost endangering the neat outline of Noura’s tattoo. Then he grinned. ‘They’re all yours, Sveltlar.’
‘What,’ Micah enquired, ice now in full glacial flourish, ‘would I want with your testicles, Vaer man?’
‘Dunno,’ Torben said. ‘Suck on ’em?’
‘Thunder Bear, do not bugger up my alliance!’ Feilan hissed in village-Vaer.
‘I am telling you, he likes it, Little Wolf.’ He wiggled his fingers, and Micah sighed.
Before he walked away, though, Feilan had one more thing to say, flat and serious. ‘Micah, you need to understand me on something. If you don’t manage to kill Darya—’
‘That can only happen if your plan fails.’
‘—you still don’t get to take the monster. If I see you try for it, I’ll order Torben to kill you and he will not hesitate for a single heartbeat, no matter how enthralled you think you’ve got him.’
‘The wolf cub has a bite, does he?’ Micah purred, easing close, and closer, till Feilan was hard-pressed not to give ground. Into his ear, lithe body leaning against his, Micah purred, ‘Perhaps I shall merely kill you first, then.’
‘Right. Is this whole thing—’ Feilan made a general wave of his hand over the silky invasion of proximity, carefully not letting his hand so much as brush Micah’s shoulder. ‘—revenge for questioning the honour of your word?’
‘Yes, you, as Noura would have it, pillock,’ Micah said, smoothly pulling away. ‘I said I am in, and I am in. I know my risks. You look to yours.’
Feilan sensibly refrained from pointing out that Micah remained one of the risks he was looking to.
By the time Tyra finished with Noura, the freedom tattoo’s silver briefly gleaming bright like oil under the lamps before she added the final ink to age it, it was full dark. The moon, almost at gloam, was not due to rise until near dawn.
The old tattooist was clearly exhausted from squinting in the low light and keeping her hands rock-steady. With the chair left for Afzal, Eirikr and Helle would take it in turns to carry her back down the long curving path to the town.
Gytha took Aminah’s arm with a confident nod to Noura. Aminah offered her a nod, too. Mother and daughter had not yet learned they were free to be as affectionate with each other as they liked, without it being turned into a weapon by the ugly-souled man who had owned them. Or perhaps they did not want to tempt the ever-jealous fates by celebrating until after tomorrow night.
Feilan made his way tiredly along the arcade, ignoring Torben and Micah jibing at each other and the quiet hum of Noura’s purpose. She planned to go to her master in the morning, when he would have missed Aminah, to lay her daughter’s alibi.
‘But don’t kill him then,’ Feilan warned.
She’d loosened her plaited hair, and played with it as they walked, letting a coarse lock fall over the new tattoo. It wasn’t enough to obscure it. ‘About your idea?’
‘Yes.’ He sighed. ‘Punch me.’ He looked over his shoulder. ‘You two do some shouting and swearing, too. Exchange a few blows. Don’t hurt each other.’
He turned back to Noura, who raised her hands in bewilderment. He had just freed her daughter, he supposed. He poked her in the eye. She yelled and smacked him across the side of the head.
Hand clapped over her eye, she shouted, ‘Why did you do that, you cracked pillock?’
He had his own hand against his ringing ear, but he used his other hand to touch the high point of his own cheekbone. ‘So Micah can bandage it up, and not incidentally cover your cheek while he does it.’
‘You— Oh. Might’ve warned me. Wouldn’t have hit you so hard.’
‘We needed it to look good.’ He indicated over her shoulder, and she turned to see a servant trotting off up the arcade, no doubt running straight to First Hill. ‘The uncle’s going to think our alliance is falling apart.’
And that was when he knew he wasn’t going to make a deal with Bertrand.
He turned to make sure Torben and Micah hadn’t become too enthusiastic about their own fight, though they were so quiet that he wasn’t overly concerned. Indeed, they were both standing stock still, facing him, the full paved width of the arcade between them. Torben had a surprised look on his face; Micah had his arms folded, looking icy.
‘Did…did you have a bit of a wrestle to sell our falling-out?’ Feilan asked, looking between the two. He hoped one had not accidentally hurt the other too badly. He was too tired for this.
‘Yep,’ Torben said.
‘Shut up,’ Micah said with a startling abandonment of eloquence, and stalked off ahead into Third Hill East.
‘Get him to tend your eye,’ Feilan told Noura. ‘Doesn’t have to be too dramatic. The fact that you’re still willing to go into the hunting ground is going to allay your former master’s suspicions considerably, if he’d even bestir himself to have any. I don’t think he’s going to demand to see a tattoo he knows can’t be altered.’
‘If he does, I’ll kill him on the spot,’ she said. ‘But no, I don’t either.’ She went after Micah.
Feilan gave Torben a long look. ‘I don’t want to know,’ he said at last. ‘Just don’t bugger up my alliance.’
He took himself off to bed. Remy was already there, curled up, pillow over his head, unmoving. He smelled faintly of the same pungent scent that had lingered about the cave. He might or might not have been asleep. He was either as exhausted as Feilan, or thinking hard about something.
Feilan felt an overwhelming urge to shake his shoulder and demand, at the very least, a cuddle, if not more. But then he might be compelled to spill out his reason for needing the physical comfort, his guilt for almost betraying Remy, his guilt for risking Freyja’s future.
He let his husband be. They’d talk in the morning.