Rosmunda had not been pleased when Feilan had finally shared, halfway down the curving road, sightlines showing empty road in both directions, and only a few farmhands in the rolling fields to either side, that the proof was secured back in Seven Hills.
But she had listened, and Conrad had listened.
Feilan had, by necessity, had to trust both of them with at least enough details to engage them fully to his side and put the plan back on course. Remy had been meant to present the wheeled chair to Adeline and Afzal, and inveigle an immediate jaunt, but Feilan hadn’t had the chance to tell him that. Rosmunda might have passed a message, except that Feilan was no longer sure Remy would play it true.
He should: the chair was the mechanism for fulfilling the alliance’s promise to Micah. Break that promise, break the queen’s alliance, thus delivering an easy win for Uncle Bertrand’s bloc, to the fatal detriment of whatever deal Remy had bartered for. Now he’d taken control of the alliance with Feilan’s expedient removal, he should want it to hold just as much as Feilan did.
But using Remy was too much of a risk now. Uncle Bertrand might very well order him to make sure Torben didn’t win. Remy was naive enough to obey without ironclad assurances as to the fate of their deal if he did. And with Torben’s god-sworn mercenary contract safely in Adeline’s hands, destroying the alliance Feilan had mortared into place would be far easier than finding a way to disqualify the queen’s champion under the canny eyes of the neutral witnesses.
And so Feilan turned the role over to Rosmunda, constraining her with a large shackle: she could not let Darya, Adeline, or Remy realise the gift was a continuation of the exiled-in-disgrace Feilan’s plan, lest any of them baulk. Remy, in particular, had to be kept in the dark. Not that Remy would choose to deny the boy a gift that would give him freedom; he had a temper but wasn’t spiteful. But, though he couldn’t know the plan’s particulars, he knew winning Micah a clean chance at Darya’s throat was a central prong of it. It was a short step from noticing the wheeled chair in the cave that morning to guessing it had a role beyond a surprise gift from a doting aunt, and an even shorter step to understanding that it was the key to an alliance he may or may not wish to preserve.
Rosmunda would have to fetch the chair without arousing suspicion, give it to Adeline without alerting Remy, and then hope that both children would be excited enough to naturally want to take it for a ride along the lamplit arcade without the overt encouragement that might alert Darya.
‘I’ll want to see the proof before I help you,’ she’d said firmly.
‘I’ll show it to you when I come back up tonight,’ Feilan had countered, because he did not trust them so far as to tell them where it was hidden.
Conrad frowned at this, and put his hand on his wife’s arm protectively. ‘Why, exactly, did Remy have you thrown out?’
Feilan hesitated. Even now, he didn’t want to condemn Remy by admitting it was because he’d accepted a deal with Bertrand and decided to stick with it even once he’d learned of his mother’s fate at the man’s hands. Even if he didn’t outright believe Feilan, it was strange that the accusation and his uncle’s blatant destruction of what he’d thought was its evidence hadn’t given him the same pause it had given Rosmunda.
Perhaps that was what Remy was doing today, taking his usual time to think it over. Perhaps he would be waiting with contrite mien and open arms when Feilan returned that night.
And perhaps Feilan was engaging in wishful thinking as dangerous as surrendering to his simmering anger would be.
‘Does Bertrand have some hold over him?’ he asked at last.
His attempt at subtlety was wasted. Rosmunda’s brows shot up. ‘You think he allied himself to Uncle?’ She began to shake her head. ‘No. He didn’t. He simply wouldn’t.’
‘Look, he loves Adeline,’ Feilan said. ‘If he thought he was doing his best by her—’
‘Yes, he loves Adeline,’ she said sharply. ‘So he’d not betray her like that. He’d at least have asked her permission, and you saw her – she was as confused by all this as I was. And…’ She raised her chin and met his eyes challengingly, as if she thought he’d argue. ‘He loves you, too, Feilan. He’d not betray you, either.’
He did want to argue. Instead he bid them farewell. They would have the delicate task, in addition to their evening’s activities, of implying to Uncle Bertrand that they’d rescinded Feilan’s guest right, while making sure the guards knew that he was welcome when he walked back in tonight.
Feilan thought about her claim – he loves you, he’d not betray you – as he went down to the town. He was well aware that the first matter did not preclude the second. Every time he thought of it, the pressure, a roil of anger and hurt with just an undercurrent of self-pity, throbbed like a stab wound through him and the betrayal tried to close over his head and drown him.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew he’d have already succumbed, if he and Torben hadn’t had their exceedingly long-delayed conversation that very morning.
Instead, he took his outrage and turned it into defiance and a stubborn determination to do right by Adeline: Great-Uncle Bertrand and Uncle Remy did not get to win control of her modest throne tonight. That he still needed to parlay victory into a trade deal for Freyja was in his mind too, if distantly.
He found Gytha after discreet inquiry – Vaeringans in small foreign towns were always easy to find, their every move tracked – and updated her on his new exile. After some discussion, they elected to leave Eirikr and Helle watching over Tyra and Aminah. But Gytha would come back up to Seven Hills, taking the back path via Remy’s cave once the murk and mist set in, ready to help out, unseen, on the hunting ground.
And now it was late evening and there was a new problem.
The mist was not rising.
It had been growing steadily thinner for the last month, but even the previous night, when Feilan had sat at the cave entrance and wrestled with his guilt, it had still been just thick enough to turn anyone within its extent into merest shadows, enough to plausibly deny any cheating movement on and off the hunting ground. Even with no moon, the summer twilight was long and the walkway was well lit – he’d been relying on the mist for the extra cover.
It wouldn’t matter too much for the first part of the plan, provided Torben had passed on Feilan’s message about swapping the beads, and provided Micah or Noura had understood that swapping the jasper, Feilan’s eye colour, and the tiger-eye, Micah’s eye colour, meant swapping their roles tonight.
And provided Micah only wanted Afzal free of Darya rather than the pleasure of sinking one of his needle blades into her throat himself.
That was a fairly big ask, Feilan realised. It was almost helpful that the lack of mist would prevent Micah from making the attempt anyway…provided it didn’t provoke him into taking the monster’s head so he could have a chance at her some other time. Feilan could only predict that the man’s cool head would prevail over his hot heart.
The main problem was that, provided all other provisions came to pass, the lack of mist would hinder Feilan and Gytha in joining the others. The monster was armoured, fast, and could clear their heads in one bound – it would need more than the three queen’s warriors officially allowed out there to take it.
At this rate, Gytha wouldn’t even be able to get past the Seven Hills guards, uncharacteristically posted in pairs within sight of each other all the way along the walkway as far as Feilan could see. He couldn’t imagine the sentry line wouldn’t extend all the way to Torben’s pavilion.
For himself, he merely walked up the road to the forecourt as soon as he saw the first stars emerge.
‘You’re not allowed here,’ a guard blurted when he strolled in.
‘I am Lady Rosmunda’s guest,’ he said.
It took a little argument, and a message run to the spectators and back, but he was allowed in, still armed with the bastard sword Torben had fetched for him that morning, only to be escorted straight to the old barracks by no less than four guardsmen. No matter; it was where he wanted to be.
He was taken up the stairs to the roof, and to Bertrand, who stood with arms akimbo, affably annoyed and enjoying his advantage. Feilan couldn’t help looking down at Remy, who huddled miserably on his cushion, set between Uncle Bertrand and Hughard. Remy wouldn’t raise his gaze.
Feilan nudged his cushion with a booted foot. Look at me, you treacherous shit. Remy mutely shook his head.
‘Rosmunda, what is the meaning of extending guest right to the barbarian?’ Uncle Bertrand demanded. ‘Oh. Where’s she gone now?’
Handling the wheeled chair ploy, if Feilan’s luck was holding and she wasn’t refusing to begin her part until he showed her the testimonies.
‘She had to help Adeline with something,’ Conrad called. ‘Um. You know.’ He made the vaguest of vague gestures upwards, as if towards an entirely absent moon.
This either confused the male spectators, made them stroke their chins knowingly, or lost their already slight interest entirely. Darya, meanwhile, one of the few women left on the rooftop, rolled her eyes.
Really, so-called women’s troubles were the best serthing excuse Feilan had ever come across for not explaining secretive movements to men. No wonder the women of his information network performed so ably. Well. Aside from intelligence, competence and an almost appalling level of steely-eyed ruthlessness, of course.
He nudged Remy’s cushion again, Remy’s last warning before he started nudging his ribs instead. Look at me. Look me in the eye.
‘Hyndla,’ he said, his tone making it clear he very much meant the literal meaning this time. ‘Come on, you’ve shown me your spine often enough.’
Remy unfolded himself and stood. His hair was tightly bound, his face stark and set. He still wore the protective talisman from Freyja, but a leather thong hung about his neck now, too, and Feilan caught another whiff of that new pungent odour from the cave, not nearly as pretty as the bracelet beads.
‘It’s too late,’ he told Feilan with the same stiff offence with which he’d confronted everything in Siftar. It was infuriating to be subject to it, when Feilan was the one who had the right to offence. ‘They’re already on the field. You can’t change their instructions now.’
Feilan glanced down to the arena before the stables, lit in a clash of flickering gold and orange torchlight. He was really here, openly, to show himself to the others, especially Micah. He couldn’t do anything so crass as to nod meaningfully, but he could let his casual gaze wander over his for the briefest of brief moments.
Micah was standing close to Torben, who waved his spear at Feilan in insouciant salute. Noura was distant from them, arms folded, head bandaged. Njorda’s tits, Feilan hoped that was just them maintaining the fiction of the alliance’s failure. The last two independent warriors also stood alone, though Feilan thought their secret alliance to Bertrand’s four-man-strong bloc was in force.
‘I don’t need to change their instructions,’ he said. ‘They already know what they need to do.’
‘I’m not going to let you win,’ Remy whispered.
‘Right back at you, Rufran,’ Feilan answered, just as quietly.
Remy shook his head, glancing at his uncle fearfully. Bertrand, smiling benignly, dropped an uplifted hand, and the champions turned out into the hunting ground. It was different without the mist. The skyglow was enough to make the figures dimly visible even as they descended down the hill into the great bowl, but they soon vanished into the depths of the moonless night.
Feilan watched his alliance descend until not even indistinct shadows could be made out. Noura, a new taste of freedom in her mouth, might yet hold herself back from the fight. Torben, his mortality a real concept for him now, might yet flinch. Micah, ever reliant only upon himself, might yet choose his own plan over Feilan’s disintegrating one.
But Remy was correct on that point: Feilan could do nothing but trust them and their united resolve now.
He nodded and moved on to the next step, securing Lady Rosmunda’s continued assistance. ‘I’m here to collect my things. I don’t trust you svinar to send it on.’
‘We searched your room,’ Bertrand told him. ‘We confiscated your valuables. Consider it your penalty for playing my nephew false.’
Feilan flicked a glance towards Conrad, who returned him a bland, uninformative smile. But this news could mean – must mean – Rosmunda was proceeding without expecting to see the evidence, for Bertrand had either found and secretly destroyed it, or genuinely turned up nothing. Both results signally failed to support Feilan’s accusation, and yet Rosmunda was not on the roof.
He breathed out. Next step. ‘Escort me,’ he ordered Remy. ‘I’ll take what’s left.’
This gambit was mostly to remove Remy before Adeline came to whisk Afzal out from under Darya’s control, since Feilan couldn’t be sure what his intentions were towards the queen’s alliance. He might still need Torben to win, but he also might be acting in obedience to Bertrand, and either way, he now seemed so antipathetic towards Feilan that he might stymie the plan on spleeny reflex.
But Feilan couldn’t deny he’d give an arm to get Remy alone, regardless. Perhaps then he could persuade him to confess the combination of promise and threat Uncle Bertrand had deployed to change his allegiance. He could shake the treacherous shit until his teeth rattled.
He could say, I know I kept saying we might not win, but we will. He could say, I’ll stay and help you keep Bertrand at bay so Adeline can rule.
He could say, Remy, it was one kiss, and I’m sorry.
Even as Remy went ashy with obvious fear at the idea of accompanying the barbarian anywhere, his niece came bouncing up the stairs, calling out excitedly. Like Remy, she, too, now wore a necklace.
‘You must come down, Afzal!’ she cried. ‘You have to see what my aunt has given us.’ She turned pleading eyes on Darya. ‘Oh, please, let him come see it. It’s wonderful!’
Feilan smoothly reversed strategy; now the aim was to keep Remy on the rooftop, so he wouldn’t see the chair and put the ploy together. ‘One good thing,’ he announced. ‘At least I don’t have to cater to the whims of a spoilt little girl anymore.’
Adeline flashed a look of confused hurt before shaking it off as part of the strange argument her uncle and his husband were having, or perhaps even accepting it as part of a plan she had lost the threads of. Remy’s mettle was aroused on her behalf, however. His hands went to his hips, eyes spitting fury.
He glared at Feilan and his expression felt familiar: anger and defiance, and under that, the same deep hurt Feilan was trying to ignore.
Feilan didn’t have time to unravel it. He had to keep Remy embroiled for long enough that Adeline successfully escaped off the roof with Afzal without Remy taking it into his head to follow them down to see what the fuss was about. Darya could do that; Feilan couldn’t risk Remy doing so and blurting out a fatal warning.
He took Remy’s arm, curving fingers tight around his bicep, expecting him to try to edge around him, either to join Adeline or to avoid the brewing argument, or both.
But Remy stood his ground, obstinately between Feilan and Bertrand, who was threatening to call the guards, but not actually doing so. He’d be enjoying his nephew’s well-deserved discomfort, and probably also allowing Remy to be thoroughly reminded that it was better to deal with the villain he knew than the barbarian he did not.
Feilan had been intending to say something insulting, something distracting. Remy trembled under his touch, rendering him speechless with resentment and shame.
Beyond their tableau, Darya was so taken with the pretty pleading from the queen, and so smug about the alliance tearing itself into pieces before her, that she gave the most gracious of nods. The silent giant tasked with carrying Afzal scooped him up, a gentle movement at odds with the ugly sternness of his face. He followed Adeline down the stairs, Afzal in his arms.
A moment later, the boy gave a yelp, and then a pair of childish voices were raised in a babble of excitement, followed by a strange sound, something like the ringing of a bell mixed with a teeth-tingling scrape – the big iron wheels of the chair running across the stone paving of the arcade, rapidly quietening as it grew more distant.
Darya sat up, frowning, looking over at Feilan, who made sure to be scowling at Remy without regard for anything happening in his vicinity. By the time she had started for the stairs, her man had come back up. He respectfully bowed his head and murmured something to her, and she looked severely annoyed before returning to her cushion.
Feilan eyed off the big man with interest. He wondered if Micah had been entirely correct to presume that Afzal had no other ally but him.
Right. Next step, a simple one: he had to now storm off down the stairs as if departing Seven Hills in disgrace. He would secrete himself within the empty barracks below, wait for Darya to come down in pursuit of her ward and shield, and murder her for Micah.
Having held his Vaer impulses in check all day, he was rather looking forward to it. He even hoped she’d bring enough of her bodyguards to make it a challenge.
He let Remy go with a dramatic fling, shoving him into his uncle’s arms with enough force to almost bowl both of them over.
‘I’m leaving.’ He spat at Remy’s feet. ‘Flari lortr.’
Remy, outrageously, became wholly indignant at this accusation. ‘I’m the treacherous turd? Me?’
Remy, Feilan realised, was wearing the mirror of his own betrayed expression. He stopped. ‘You—’
Shouts rang out across the field, echoed by more on the rooftop itself.
The monster was coming.
It was even bigger than Feilan remembered, its insectoid speed preternatural on an armoured creature of that size. It tore up the slope towards Seven Hills. Behind it came the warriors, not just the alliance Feilan wanted to see, but Bertrand’s bloc as well. The nine champions were in dogged pursuit, but it was easily gaining ground, its multiple limbs almost seeming to pull it along.
The distinctive sound of its claws ripping into the turf as it closed in shook Feilan awake. ‘Go make sure Adeline’s under cover,’ he told Remy.
Remy stood frozen beside Bertrand, staring in shock at the fluid grace and speed of the thing that had killed his brother. Feilan arrived at a depressing conclusion about the monster’s trajectory and ran for the stairs himself.
Then he had a sudden flash of memory – still half-blinded by the horrendous bright blue of the smithy smell of Torben’s blood, watching in cold shock as the cornered monster leapt high to escape.
He spun. Spectators were crowding to the edge for a better view. Feilan roared, ‘Get off the roof!’
He was answered only by the sudden unison of shrieks from the front row of spectators as the monster landed with a rattling crash in the centre of the rooftop.
It reared there, poised, then scythed out with its claws, spilling blood. The crowded and panicking occupants of the front row were almost safe, since they were behind it, but Conrad had to roll away in great haste, clutching at his shoulder. The fatal blue flashed across Feilan’s vision as more screams rang out.
The roof creaked ominously. The monster lashed its tail, knocking Hughard into his other siblings. Remy crouched by his uncle, face blank in terror.
Feilan drew his sword. Micah had warned them that if his blades could not pierce the armour, theirs would not. But he had also said, should they dare to get in close, they’d find seams between the pale and scaly armour plates.
He whistled, and the monster turned its sleek head his way, the beams underfoot giving another tortured groan. Saliva dripped from its long teeth. Its legs coiled, ready to spring.
‘Come on, then,’ Feilan whispered, raising the sword.
The roof collapsed.