Briskly sorting jars and rearranging pestles, Remy didn’t look up when Feilan came in, but Feilan could tell from the way his shoulders stiffened that he knew he was there. The chair on wheels had been pushed to one side, out of the way of the workbenches, so Remy could stalk back and forth in fretful dudgeon, all the smooth grace and competence he usually exhibited in his domain left to rot by the wayside.
Feilan considered inflicting Torben’s technique and simply walking over to forcibly hug him tight until all the venom squeezed out of him. It had worked before, after all. But given the jerky way he was moving and his refusal to even glance over, any Vaer presumption in this moment would more than likely spiral him even more into defensive anger.
He should probably leave him here, in the place where he felt safest, to work off his temper until he was ready to talk about seeing Feilan swallowed up in a passionate kiss from the man he’d described as the itch he couldn’t help scratching.
Feilan weighed up that tactic.
Or he could probably explain himself right serthing now. ‘It was—’
‘The marriage isn’t real,’ Remy said.
‘Which one?’ Feilan was far gone enough to enquire. ‘Oh, ours?’
‘I got the words wrong. We used your byname instead of your real name. So it’s not valid. It was never valid. You may go home.’
‘I know,’ Feilan said, waving it away. ‘You made such a fuss about my byname, it was obvious you thought you’d botched it. No matter. We’ll just do it again, if it bothers you. We do quite a nice handfast ceremony, actually, if you can stand a Vaer ritual.’
Remy turned around and stared at him, the same flat look he’d worn constantly in the first days of their marriage. ‘I informed my uncle. Guards are coming to remove you from Seven Hills.’
‘Guards – what?’ As if conjured, he heard the coordinated tramp of feet overhead, growing louder. ‘This is precipitous. You need me for the monster hunt.’
Remy took off the gold ring he’d worn since the morning after their supposed wedding night. He set it on the bench. ‘I need you for nothing.’
The utter contempt in voice and face forced Feilan to swallow a responding anger like a gulp of burning poison. ‘I’m sorry I upset you,’ he said. ‘I will make amends as soon as you let me. But don’t ruin Adeline’s chances out of momentary ire.’
Remy turned his back. ‘I am protecting her chances.’
The rejoinder made him frown but before he could query it, the Seven Hills guards marched into the cave. There were eight of them, half the on-duty guards. It would have been flattering, if he hadn’t been busy battling his rising alarm and anger.
‘Escort him out of Seven Hills,’ Remy commanded, assuming the silken authority of the princeling he was. ‘He may not delay to collect his belongings; they will be sent on. He may speak to no one, not Queen Adeline, not Lord Bertrand, not his friends. He must depart immediately.’
The guardsmen uncertainly moved to surround Feilan, unprofessionally pausing when he held up a palm to them as if he were their captain.
He said, ‘Remy, svasa, this is not necessary. It was a goodbye kiss, that’s all.’ The volume of his voice had risen despite himself.
‘Be careful,’ Remy told the guards, taking an ostentatiously sidling step away with his hands raised and look of fear on his face that read to Feilan as pure mockery. ‘He lashes out when he’s angry.’
Feilan gave a short huff, narrowing his eyes at Remy, who said, flatly, ‘Please don’t let the barbarian hurt me.’
That finally tipped Feilan from the thin edge of his calm. ‘Oh, sertha thu!’ Remy smiled and Feilan discovered a Seven Hill curse on his tongue. ‘Slough off and gout!’
In that moment of Feilan’s flash of temper and Remy’s satisfied acceptance of it, Torben appeared behind the soldiers and threw Feilan’s sheathed sword to him over their heads, an assured and practised gesture. He was carrying his own longsword. He must have passed the guards as they marched along the arcade, and immediately gone to Third Hill East for the weapons.
Feilan caught the tossed blade with an equal confidence born from his bersverdr upbringing, no matter how reluctant it had been. The moment his hands closed around the tooled sheath, he felt the hypnotic pull of it: a bared blade in his hand, a countryman at his back, battle-rage in his soul: together, they could kill these guards, easily. A full rampage might even score them the entirety of Seven Hills, as spread out and underprepared as it was. They could summon up the three Siftar sentries, to help load their pillage onto riverboats, to send on to Freyja.
This blood-and-flame desire passed through Feilan long enough for Torben to meet his eyes and silently ask the question.
But Feilan was past his initial shock now and understood what must have happened. Remy couldn’t have summoned those guardsmen in response to seeing him kissing Torben: he’d gone straight on to his cave upon witnessing it. Even if the cave had the same bell-pulley system their room did – it didn’t – they’d come too fast; unless they had already been alerted and assembled, it made the timing impossible.
And so. Bertrand had got to Remy last night during the family supper, when Feilan wasn’t there to shield him. He’d played on the doubts that Feilan had been too honest to completely dismiss. He’d repeatedly warned him he couldn’t guarantee the win. Remy had surely overheard Torben’s brief waver, too, in the pavilion. It had perhaps struck him just as hard as it had Feilan, and what shitty, shitty timing for Torben to have a momentary glimpse of his own mortality!
Remy would have sat at that supper, wondering where his husband had gone, with Bertrand smiling and cooing and washing the sand out from beneath his feet.
His uncle must have made an offer he couldn’t resist, some deal that would likely see them share the regency equally. That was why Remy had been in bed last night with his pillow over his head. He’d been thinking it over, deciding whether or not to betray his husband for the short-term benefit of his niece.
Then, this morning, before ever seeing the kiss, he’d gone to Bertrand with his decision, and here was the result. It would have only crystallised his decision if he’d heard talk of the falling-out among his allied champions last night.
The treachery was especially infuriating since Feilan had faced the same decision – his husband or the short-term benefit of his mother – and chosen his husband. He’d had to think about it, but he’d made the choice.
He had been as thoroughly betrayed as it was possible to be: no matter any incidental benefit to Freyja, he was here solely because of Remy, and Remy had turned on him.
Feilan lowered his sword, still sheathed.
‘Right,’ he said, and his note of sudden decision made Remy’s gaze snap to his.
He smiled at his husband and strode out past the clustered guards.
They had to hurry in order to escort him, and not one dared stop Torben from cheerily pacing along beside him, saying, ‘What’s the plan, Little Wolf?’
That was plainly Remy’s concern also. He called from behind, ‘They may not speak. Torben, your contract is with Adeline. You are not to take instruction from this man.’
That little reminder must decidedly be because Remy knew Adeline would instruct her champion however her beloved uncle dictated: to win, to stand aside, to render assistance to the bloc, whatever his own uncle demanded of him.
Outrage crested in Feilan again: that conniving little shit, using Adeline’s unwavering loyalty against her to take control of her alliance in such a cynical, underhanded way!
His brain chose that moment to haunt him with his own words: It’s not betraying her if it gets her more than she’d get when you lose outright.
He turned to Torben and said, in rapid village-Vaer, ‘Your contract is with the bear-god, you’re contracted to win. Nothing changes that.’
‘I know,’ Torben said, bewildered.
‘Stop talking to him!’ Remy demanded, ‘or I’ll have the guardsmen—’
Feilan stopped dead. ‘Ja, what?’ Hands on hips, which made the sword he still carried stick out prominently, he surveyed the young uniformed soldiers until they quailed. ‘I,’ he said loudly, ‘am helping my friend with his talisman for tonight’s hunt.’
Torben had worn Feilan’s talisman since Feilan had tied it about his wrist when he’d lain dying in the cave and the witch of Seven Hills had saved him. Shaking his head in suppressed outrage and hurt, Feilan caught Torben’s thick wrist and raised it so they could both see the talisman.
He murmured, ‘Listen carefully, Freyja did the beads wrong.’
‘She did not!’ Torben, scandalised, reached for his necklace amulet in superstitious dread.
‘She did,’ Feilan said.
He shifted his body to block the view of the Seven Hills watchers as far as he was able. ‘You need to switch the position of these two beads.’ He touched the last jasper bead and the single tiger-eye bead. ‘Understand?’
Torben was silent as Feilan released his wrist and stepped back.
‘Swap the beads,’ Feilan repeated, ‘before the hunt, or it won’t work properly. Micah’s quick. He’ll help, if you tell him what I said to do. Stay here now, Thunder Bear, and don’t provoke anything that loses you access to the hunt tonight. We are still going to win for Adeline, good?’
He said this last with a look at the hovering Remy. Remy said, ‘Torben, you made your contract by swearing to the bear-god, you’re beholden to Adeline and only Adeline. You work for her, not him.’
‘I serthing know!’ Torben said again, sounding even more bewildered, all the way to the edge of angry now. ‘That’s what I’m doing. That’s what we’ve all been doing, this whole time.’
Ah. Just like Feilan, Remy must need the queen’s alliance to win to make his deal with Bertrand more advantageous. It was galling to realise Remy planned to use Torben and the others to betray Adeline under the guise of helping her, and it only made it more insufferable that Feilan himself had briefly intended to do much the same thing.
Under that outrage, he was almost as bewildered as Torben. Perhaps Remy had finally seen the same thing Feilan had guessed from the start – Bertrand would never truly allow Adeline to rule in her own right, no matter the outcome of the contest or the watching eyes of the other Riverlands rulers.
If Remy were to win, a buffer between Bertrand and the queen… A different contender might have unnerved Bertrand, but not his cowed youngest nephew. That said nephew had been showing more and more of the spine he’d previously kept well-hidden would have just made Uncle Bertrand more determined to bring him back under the thumb. By that logic, both Nivardus men would want to negotiate while their respective positions were strong, but whatever Bertrand had offered Remy last night had probably had some stick to it, as well as carrot.
It was so exactly how Feilan had intended to tackle Bertrand that it burned like acid to know he’d got there first.
‘Goodbye, Torben,’ he said firmly. ‘Go find Micah.’
Leaving Torben to his bemusement, and keeping his own emotions firmly leashed, Feilan set off again, letting the stoic guardsmen walk with him towards the First Hill forecourt and the road down to the town. He supposed he was meant to find his own way home, with whatever resources he happened to be carrying.
He touched his belt-pouch. He had no intention of departing for Siftar.
Bertrand was waiting in the forecourt, smirking. Remy made a noise under his breath. Did he think Feilan wouldn’t have understood he was now working with his uncle? Adeline was there too, hands wringing together in a gesture of nerves Feilan hadn’t seen since Siftar, and Rosmunda had her arm around her niece’s sturdy and currently rigid shoulders.
They both looked alarmed, and very confused. Remy was indeed working behind the queen’s back, then, and his sister’s.
Remy went to stand by his uncle, a voluntary move that merely cemented his guilt. He even half-stepped in front of the older man when Feilan turned towards them, as if protecting him, shielding him from Feilan’s anger.
‘You may not speak to him,’ Remy said, voice shaky, but all his stubborn defiance at the fore.
Feilan had intended to take the thick packet of parchments to Uncle Bertrand and make a different deal to the safer one Freyja had implicitly desired, a riskier arrangement requiring the patriarch to gracefully give way when Adeline’s champion won tonight, in exchange for Feilan’s silence – and his peaceable ongoing restraint. He didn’t have that opportunity now.
But he did have an audience.
One hand still gripping the sheathed sword, the leather warm in his tight fist, he pulled parchment from his pouch and held it up with the other hand.
‘Bertrand killed your mother,’ he said, looking at Remy and at Rosmunda. ‘She was safe, and he decided to have his way with her on the way home, and he killed her when she resisted. Might have been an accident. Suited him anyway.’
‘What bitter, vicious lies!’ Bertrand said, turning to his niece and nephew with an authentic look of grief and horror. ‘Oh, my dear children, how can you stand to even listen to this?’
By all the fierce gods of the sacred heroes’ halls, Feilan thought, staring at Bertrand with something very close to hatred, Torben’s method is such an easy solution.
Cutting down Uncle Bertrand in bloody splendour would solve his immediate problem, and a few future problems as well. He’d never promised Remy any better. He didn’t owe Remy any better, even if he had.
And it would confirm everything these people had ever thought about barbarians. It would traumatise the little girl, and her aunt and uncle as well. It would let the other siblings blame Remy for bringing a barbarian into their midst. It would irreparably destroy Remy’s relationship with Rosmunda, and probably with his sweet and loyal niece as well. He would never again be held in affection by anyone.
Feilan loosened his grip on the sword, which only drew everyone’s attention to it. The guardsmen shifted.
‘Or maybe he always planned to murder her, to destroy your father,’ he said, stepping away from them, closer to the clustered Nivardus family. They drew in towards each other. ‘I don’t have proof of that. I do have proof of the attempted assault and its outcome.’
And he held out the parchment to Remy, eyes steady on his husband’s ashen face.
To his immense relief, Bertrand snatched the parchment. He wrestled with it, struggling almost comically to rip it. Eventually he managed it, and for a few moments, the rough rasp of him tearing strips was the only sound, loud in the early morning emptiness of the forecourt.
Feilan watched this performance with a display of mild interest. Only when Bertrand was done, scattering shreds at his feet, did he say, ‘That wasn’t the proof.’
Bertrand froze.
‘But do feel free to tell us: why did you feel the need to work very hard to destroy it, if you didn’t fear the contents?’
He looked over at his audience. Remy’s face was blank, Adeline looked frightened, but Rosmunda wore an aghast expression that told him his logic had struck true with her.
‘This is vile nonsense,’ Bertrand said. ‘Guards, send him away. Children, come with me.’
He turned and swept off, expecting, as always, immediate obedience.
Remy had put his face in his hands. He dropped them now. He looked at Feilan, eyes wide and dark, and over his shoulder at his departing uncle. His face was pinched and wan, bleak as a heartland winter landscape.
‘Come on, Remy,’ Feilan said. ‘You must see it. You know you can’t trust him.’
‘I can’t trust you,’ he said.
‘It was just a kiss!’ Feilan swallowed the bubbling temper and a good mouthful of profanity. ‘Look. Come with me, please. I’ll—’
‘I won’t risk Adeline for your sake,’ Remy said, and walked off after Bertrand.
Feilan ran his hands through his hair in muted frustration. ‘Adeline? I need guest right. Please.’
Adeline paused. It was her turn to glance between Feilan and a departing relative. But this was the young girl who had lost her mother, heard her own father and all her relatives blame her youngest uncle, and still stubbornly clung to her bond with him, privileging her own knowledge of his true heart over the rumours and fulminations of others.
She trusted Remy, and she trusted him now. ‘Sorry, Uncle Faro, I just can’t,’ she said, and followed her uncle into First Hill.
That left Rosmunda. She and Feilan stared at each other as the guardsmen finally moved to surround and seize him. Skin crawling, blood pounding, he nonetheless didn’t resist as they began to drag him off the forecourt and onto the road, for all that would achieve; there was no gate, no walls. He could walk back into Seven Hills anytime he liked. He just needed guest right to be allowed to stay there rather than subject himself to an endless repeat of this half-arsed exile.
He stared at Rosmunda, silently pleading because if he tried to talk now he would shout like a true Vaer.
She said, ‘I extend guest right.’
‘Get your serthing hands off me, you lorti svinar!’ Feilan indeed shouted.
The guards backed away with unbecoming haste. He scowled around at them with some venom; the humiliation of letting himself be manhandled off the premises had triggered that unsuspected Vaer pride, or perhaps it was just close enough to his last exiling – also Torben’s fault! – to have awakened shameful memories.
‘You have some real proof of your claim?’ Rosmunda enquired in a shaking voice.
‘Yes.’ He glared pointedly at the guardsmen. ‘Privately.’
Rosmunda held up a bejewelled hand, face set in thought. ‘I will walk you down to town,’ she said at last. ‘You have that long to convince me.’
He couldn’t mention the parchments hidden in his trunk – at least one of these guards would run straight to Uncle Bertrand to tell him. He said, ‘Good, a copy of the proof is held by my friends down there,’ and hoped he wasn’t dooming Aminah and the Siftar sentries, or indeed the entire riverport, to an unpleasant afternoon.
‘You are dismissed,’ she told the guards.
The most senior of the guards spoke up. ‘The barbarian, lady. He might harm you.’
She said, ‘Send my husband here, he will accompany me.’
The guardsman eyed Feilan, openly wearing his doubt regarding a single escort. Feilan managed a complacent look about that piece of flattery.
‘Stop it,’ Rosmunda hissed at him, and to the guard, a more commanding, ‘You, go!’