CHAPTER XXXI

They rode slowly, letting the horses walk. Ghu did not speak or even look either of them in the eye, and Ahjvar, without question, took Deyandara up behind him, though she had always had the impression he wanted her as far from him as possible, before. Now she knew why, and he seemed to have stopped caring. Or maybe a granddaughter wasn’t a woman, didn’t stir up nightmares by her closeness. It was oddly comforting to lean against him in her weariness, to be a child with a grandfather, safe. Their course took them winding through valleys, keeping low, below the horizon. Though they passed a pair of dead Grasslanders, Ketsim’s messengers to Durandau, maybe, both with arrow-wounds, a token handful of earth thrown over them as a blessing, they saw no sign of Hicca’s folk. There were few signs of anyone, though there were villages, folk whose lord had been the queen direct, in this region. Ghu was choosing a course that took them by the remoter pastures. The murrain hadn’t hit the cattle here. Those, they did see, and sheep, and an occasional distant shepherd who usually vanished at the sight of them. Twice their winding crossed the track of many riders.

“Where are we going?” she asked, eventually.

“There was a battle fought at Orsamoss. Just last night. Do you know it?” Ahjvar shook his head. “Seems like years . . .”

“Yes.”

“Your folk aren’t all traitors. A force under some of your lords came in time to save the high king, when the Red Masks and Marakanders broke his army and put it to flight. How they knew to come—maybe they were coming to meet him anyway.”

“What happened to the Red Masks? Ghu told Lin—”

“I did.” Ahjvar laughed. She didn’t think she’d heard him laugh before; this raised the hair on her arms. “The Lady made a serious mistake there. I hope someone’s able to take further advantage of it in Marakand.”

She waited, but he only said, “I’m thinking it was your Marnoch who led the Catairnans to Durandau.”

“Not my Marnoch. But probably.”

“Our Marnoch? I hope he lived.”

They were both sober and silent as Ghu after that. She fell asleep leaning against Ahjvar’s smoky back, feeling the heat of him even through his coat. She slept soundly as she ever had in her safe bed, till he woke her, reaching back to tap her hip.

“Down,” he said.

She didn’t see any danger, but she did as he said. They were in a valley bottom, below a brush-covered hillside, with Ghu circling back to them.

“Ahj?” he asked.

“Something I have to do,” Ahjvar said. “Before sunset. In case it’s too late, later.”

He left them both standing to roam up into the scrubby trees, moving slowly, stiffly, putting out a hand now and then to steady himself against a trunk. Deyandara looked to Ghu for an explanation.

“Too late for what?”

He shrugged.

Ahjvar wasn’t gone long. He returned with a handful of long, leafy switches.

“So . . . Granddaughter. This curse of mine. You still going to call it a story?”

“I—they didn’t die because I went to the dinaz, Cattiga and Gilru. They didn’t. Did they?”

“Great Gods, no. If anyone . . . but that’s a lot to blame on one curse. We never had the southern pox in the land in my day, though.”

“Winds change,” said Ghu vaguely.

Ahjvar gave him a strange look. “Yes,” he said, and knelt down, offered a hand, and drew Deyandara down facing him.

“Your stories tell you I was a wizard?”

“Yes. Of course. You couldn’t have cursed the duina, otherwise.”

“Throwing poison into the headwaters,” he said. “Of course it’s going to taint all the watercourses flowing from there, in some way, greater or lesser. On and on. We could make a blessing-piece and bury it, but it’s all gravel here, no clay, and I think this will do it, with you here, queen of the duina still, and last child of Hyllau.” His voice was rough on the woman’s name.

“It’s a spell?”

“Of a sort. Ghu? Here. The third. For witness.”

Ghu knelt down carefully, so they made, between them, a triangle.

“It’s simple,” Ahjvar said, and if she didn’t doubt it was possible, she might have thought he sounded defensive about that. “But to the point.” He thrust his dagger into the soil and sliced the grassroots. “Now. Birch,” he said, putting one long, smooth-barked twig into her hand. “Hawthorn. And hazel.” He clasped both her hands around the twigs like a nosegay of flowers, folded his own over them. But the base of the hawthorn had been stripped of thorns. She could feel how his hands shook, then, and they felt fevered, dry and burning. But his burns had gone scabby already. “. . . which are new life, and kingship, and purification,” he said. “I, who was Catairlau, say, let the evil and the ill-wishing I put on the son of Hyllau and the children of Hyllanim and the land of Hyllanim, witting or unwitting, be past and done with . . .” His grip on her hands was crushing. “. . . and never return upon them.”

He brought her hands down to the earth, and together they laid the twigs in the slit in the turf, pressing it down over them, burying them. And with their faces so close together, he kissed her forehead, still holding her hands.

“So.” Let her go and sat back, with a brief flash of a smile. “Since I don’t remember what I said, being busy dying at the time, that’ll have to do.”

She wasn’t sure what she could say, so she took her time about wiping the earth off her hands and standing. Did she feel lighter? That was simply having lost the feeling Ahjvar was about to shout or strike out at her in some disdainful impatience. He looked—she wanted for a moment to wrap him in blankets and smooth the hair out of his eyes, tell him it was all right, everything would be fine in the morning, as her nurse had done when she was small and ill. Ghu was still looking at the flattened grass. He put his own palm over it. Ahjvar didn’t see, head down, eyes shut. When Ghu raised his hand, there was a bright-green shoot of spring there, forcing through the grass. Birch, hawthorn, hazel? Deyandara couldn’t tell, not from the small furled leaves.

Ghu rose and walked away, leaving Ahjvar there, unmoving. She touched his shoulder, warily, and when he looked up, eyes bloodshot and grey-shadowed, offered her good hand. He took it and almost pulled her down, as if he truly did need her weight to brace against in rising.

Ahjvar still didn’t suggest she ride with Ghu when he brought the horses up to them, holding Ahjvar’s stirrup as he mounted, boosting her up behind.

Deyandara told herself she had to stay awake, because she thought he might be sleeping in the saddle and she’d end up with worse than a shoulder out of joint if they both fell together, but she must have dozed, because she twitched awake at the shifting of muscles as Ahjvar turned to look at something. She looked around herself and saw a rider on the skyline above them. Her heart lurched, but then she recognized the slim shape, the long hair blowing. Which made her think again,Yeh-Lin? The rider turned towards them, angling down a sheep-cropped hillside.

“We’ve decided,” Deyandara said in haste, before she lost her nerve to speak at all. “I’m going to name Marnoch king over the duina.”

“Oh? Did he decide that for you?” A jerk of the chin at Ahjvar.

“No! I decided.”

“Are you sure?”

“Leave her alone,” Ahjvar growled. “Or were you planning on ruling Praitan through her? Not much of an empire, after Nabban, but I suppose you’ll have to start somewhere to build it all up again.”

“I am not seeking empires or dominion in any form. And I certainly wouldn’t start with the Praitannec kingdoms if I were. You’re doomed. The Five Cities will eat you all, in the end. Speaking of empires.”

“Not while the clan-fathers of the cities keep having one another’s throats cut,” he said. “And emperors have ridden over cities from out of the wild lands before.”

She sniffed. “I have better things to do with my time. Deyandara, I brought you a gift. It’s around somewhere.” Lin—Yeh-Lin—looked about, as if expecting to see whatever it was hovering mid-air.

Her tutor was one of the—“Seven devils?” Deyandara whispered, just to have it given words, if only for herself, but Yeh-Lin waved a dismissive hand. Neither of the men seemed to care.

Ghu still said nothing, but he pointed. His dogs were away up the hill, with a third, smaller, long-haired and black, in the centre of a knot of sniffing.

“Ah, there it is.” Yeh-Lin whistled, and the dog, slinking a little, broke away from the others and came to her, wary and crouching. “I can’t help the way I smell,” the devil said, a little defensively, Deyandara thought, to Ghu. “I like dogs.”

His own followed and stood watching her, not bristling now but definitely watching.

When Deyandara swung a leg over and slid down the horse’s flank, the dog came to her, pressing close, wriggling, licking. It smelt of smoke, and for some reason that made the tears stand in her eyes.

“It’s all right,” she found herself murmuring to it, into its fur. “It’s all right now. Little black fox, it’s all right.” Foolish. It had been all right, since Ahjvar had seized her from the fire. And she and the land were no longer cursed.

Ahjvar watched her for a time, then turned his horse nearer, offered a hand to her uninjured arm.

“Up,” he said. “We need to make a king.”

Ahjvar only wanted to lie down and sleep, and let Praitan tear itself apart in fighting over rule of this duina if it wanted to, but he couldn’t. He had gone beyond hurting, beyond exhaustion, into some floating dream, like a fever. He needed to stay awake. Things he had to do, before the darkness came. Something had changed, though. He didn’t know what, but the world felt off-kilter. Maybe it was having unwound that ill-wishing from the land, having found some place in his heart that wanted to do so, some crumbling of a rage that had turned long ago to stone. Or maybe it was only himself, the wizardry so long buried seeping into its old channels again. His. The hag’s. He could feel her, as if she dreamed too, floating in the same uneasy haze. Not it, not sated, sleeping, a curse he could push from his thoughts for a day, a week, months, but she. And even in their floating dream, she wept, wailed, like a lost child. The sun was standing towards the west. But there were things that must be finished, first. That thought kept returning. For a moment he couldn’t remember what he had to do. The curse on the girl. Not that. Over. Better. He wished Ghu would at least look at him.

A king for the duina. Marnoch of the Red Hills.

The devil, surprisingly, did not argue or try to bully the girl out of standing aside for Marnoch, saying with apparent approval, “Good. She’s never wanted to follow that road.” And Ghu gave Yeh-Lin his own nod of approval at that, which Ahj took for a sign of truth in the devil’s words.

“Catairanach . . .” Yeh-Lin said hesitantly, then, watching Ghu.

“Damn Catairanach,” Ahjvar said, eyes shut. “I’m not asking her.”

“No, you won’t be. Will you make a new god of the duina as well, assassin? Catairanach is gone.”

Deyandara clutched at him. Ghu didn’t look surprised at all. Ahjvar was dizzy. His ears rang, and the hag’s weeping . . . she knew, she had felt it, she . . . he should be dead. He should be dead with her, Great Gods, Catairanach was gone and her curse went on, and Ghu would die, Ghu might kill Red Masks but he was not a Red Mask and the hag would kill his friend . . .

“Ahjvar,” Ghu said softly. “It’s all right.”

What was?

“Dead?” Deyandara asked. “The Lady killed her?” She sounded simply bewildered.

“Catairanach is sleeping,” Lin said. “Forever, I do hope. She was no fit guardian for a folk. Sleeping and dreamless, though. I am not a torturer.” She sniffed. “Buried, and rather deeper than—”

“That’s enough,” said Ghu. “Good. Gone,” he continued firmly. “So leave the new king to find his new god.”

By luck, though Ahjvar did not believe it was mere luck, Ghu led them so that the first warning they had of the high king’s camp was a picket of scouts Deyandara said were Marnoch’s folk. They spread out in an arc, arrows on the string, even after Deyandara shouted to them, calling one of them by name, that it was all right, she was safe and well, Lady Lin was no traitor. Faullen, she called the grizzled man who seemed to be the leader of the four of them, and he rode forward alone, warily, while the others hung back, guarding.

“Ketsim’s?” he asked.

Lin snorted. “Don’t make me kick you in the head again, boy.” Her appearance had changed at some point as they rode; her hair iron-grey and cut above her shoulders, her face elegantly weathered. Not an illusion; Ahjvar would have noticed her working any spell so complex. Yeh-Lin. Well, Ghu seemed not to mind; at least, whatever had pushed him so inward did not seem to be fear of the devil. If anything, the wariness ran the other way.

“The high king,” Ahjvar said. Speaking hurt, and his voice croaked hoarse in his own ears.

Deyandara, interrupted in her explanations—admirably concise and simple, all things considered—of abduction by false Red Masks, the falling-out between Grasslander factions and then between Ketsim and the chief of his Praitannec allies, rescue by old companions of the road, took a breath he felt against his back and said, “Yes. We need to see my brother. And Lord Marnoch, if he—is he . . . ?”

Her breath caught and she sighed with relief as Faullen said, “He’ll be wanting to see you, too, my lady. By your leave, I’ll come back with you myself. I’m still your man.”

She nodded.

Ahjvar listened, drifting half into dream again, to Faullen telling the girl all that had happened since the night she had been captured: how Marnoch had rallied his folk and they had put the mercenary attack to flight, and Lord Fairu was wounded; how, not knowing where the supposed Red Masks had taken Deyandara, they had grimly continued their march to meet up, they hoped, with the high king, knowing, or so they thought, themselves too few to prevail in any assault on the dinaz on their own. How scouts had told of the new gathering of Marakander allies, Praitannec traitors, and its core of Red Masks, and the desertions had begun, men and women slipping away.

“If we’d had a longer march,” the scout said cheerfully, “there’d have been just the lords left, maybe. But as it was, two days after you were taken—we knew we’d come up with Durandau in the next day, and we knew the damned Marakanders were somewhere near, the new ones, and we’d crossed the trail of what looked like a force come from the dinaz to meet them—Mag, she’s a wizard of Marnoch’s household, my lord,” he added aside to Ahjvar, who managed to remember to nod, as if that mattered . . . and to stir to thought again enough to wonder where my lord had come from. Nothing Deya had said, circumspect at last. “She’s been, well, odd, since that drawing of the wands that went so strange. Quieter. Twitchy. Has dreams. We were lying up for the night on a hillside, no fires or anything, naturally, and planning to be in the saddle again in the foredawn, and those that could sleep were doing so, though I doubt that was many. Then Mag started crying that the king must ride. ‘Ride, ride, ride for Orsamoss,’ she said, ‘or the high king falls and Praitan with him, in the wars of the kings and the quarrels of the tribes,’ and she was so wild, so intent, Marnoch and the lords just sounded the horns and roused us out, before anyone really thought and asked, ‘The king must ride?’ And when they did start asking, some took it for a sign you were dead, my lady.”

“Ah,” was all Deyandara said to that.

“But riding in the dark, no matter how well you know the hills, and there weren’t that many who did, it can all go a bit like a dream, half-asleep and first you’re afraid and then you’re thinking, we’re going to die, and then . . . there were fox-lights running over the ground, and we took our guide from them. And then we didn’t need them, we heard the battle, more a running pursuit, north of that swampy ground they call the Orsamoss, and I guess the goddess of the place had sent the fox-lights, and maybe the dreams to Mag, too. They’d been fighting up on the ridge where the kings had fortified a camp, fighting in the dark, if you can imagine. There were Red Masks, and they had the high king put to flight. They’re saying the Red Masks had overtaken him and he was surrounded, a little knot of his household folk about him, when a pair of demon wolves—or dogs, I’ve heard both, or dragons, even—creatures made of shadow and mist and moonlight, with eyes of fire, came up out of the grass and attacked the Red Masks, and let him break away. I don’t know, there are always stories, you know. I didn’t see any demons myself.We came up just about then and the kings came to Marnoch’s—to your banner, I should say—and Lady Elissa, the high king’s wizard, was saying the Red Masks were all slain and the land itself was eating their corpses. That cry was going about, and the Marakanders must have known it for truth, because they started to fall apart, as if they couldn’t fight without their priests. The Grasslanders did better, but even they broke when Marnoch and Durandau rode against them . . .”

Faullen’s tale of the battle turned then on the aftermath, surrender, flight, the dead and wounded. Names, old Lady Senara dead, who shouldn’t have ridden to battle at all, young Lady Dellan gravely wounded, the wizard Hallet dead, and Lord Launval the Elder, the high king’s champion, slain by the Marakanders’ red-priest captain, and his kinsman Launval the Younger, the high king’s wizard too—Yeh-Lin made some sound of grief then, and he thought the girl was weeping, silently, against his back, at the names—and the king of the Duina Galatan and his brother too . . . and they’d found wizards, prisoners, all bound and hacked to death, bodies still warm; the Marakanders denied them rescue even as they broke and fled.

Ahjvar really did stop listening, then. He thought he fell asleep, trying to shut it out, but he woke at the horse’s sudden jinking sideways and Deyandara’s squeak of alarm at it, caught his balance as he was falling and looked around, hand on his sword. After a moment he knew the shape of the horizon. They were in a valley north of the Orsamoss ridge, where another height rose, crowned with tents and banners, ringed with disorderly camps like a constellation of infant villages. At least they kept a good watch; the horse had been excited by a skein of mounted spearmen cantering up to challenge them.

He could hear the crows and ravens over Orsamoss, even from here, and there were vultures floating in the distant sky, drawn over who could know how many miles.

Faullen rode ahead, across the shallow waters of Orsa’s brook. There was a brief exchange of words, with much excited gesturing, before he beckoned them on and the riders parted to let them through.

“Lord Marnoch’s with the kings, my lady, my lord,” he said. “They’re planning their attack on Ketsim at Dinaz Catairna. And arguing. Durandau’s for waiting here.”

The kings and queens were meeting in the high king’s pavilion at the crest of the hill, where the banners of the seven duinas and the eagle of the high king flew. There were more challenges, but Faullen dropped his avuncular manner and sang out gravely, “The queen of the Duina Catairna comes to take her place at the conclave of the kings” without a hint of his satisfaction, till he glanced back and winked at Yeh-Lin.

“Ahjvar . . .” There was a hint of panic rising in Deyandara’s voice. “What do I do? What do I tell them?”

“Ketsim’s dead, the war’s over, it’s Grasslander gangs and lost Marakanders they need to deal with.” His head throbbed. His chest hurt. Finish this, and he could sleep.

“Not that. Marnoch. Is there even something that has to be said? I don’t know any stories of how it goes, I don’t know any words. Nobody’s going to listen to me if I say I’m standing aside for Marnoch. My brother will just do what he wants over me, refuse to accept it, say I’m distraught or hysterical, appoint one of my other brothers regent.”

“Stand aside—?” Faullen asked in a whisper. “My lady, there’s no need for that, even if Ketsim did—”

“Oh, do shut up,” said Lin. “No, I’m sorry, Faullen, but it’s her choice and her right, she’s not a child and she knows herself and her own mind, and what the duina needs now—”

“Shut up, all of you,” Ahjvar snarled, and Ghu turned his horse to make himself a barrier against Lin, and Faullen, and everyone, put a hand on his shaking arm. He needed to get away from here and it wasn’t even the curse and the hag he feared in this moment but his own exhausted loss of reason. Easier just to kill the damned high king and ride away. Find a ditch to crawl into and sleep, and if the hag woke when night fell—Ghu had promised. Old Great Gods, let it be soon. Let it be over. But he would like to sleep, first.

At a sign from the escorting riders they dismounted before the high king’s pavilion.

“I’ll let the high king know you’ve returned, my lady, and ask if—” one began, and Deyandara, bent to fondle the little black herding bitch Lin had brought from the dinaz, straightened up to interrupt.

“Not a truant child,” she said, though her voice was unsteady.

“Is the queen of the Duina Catairna excluded from the council of the kings?” Yeh-Lin purred. The tent flaps were drawn back. She simply swept through as of right, Ahjvar following with Deyandara and her dog scurrying by his side. The spearmen tried to flank them, disorderly, uncertain. Faullen trailed unnoticed.

The high king, a man of about thirty or so, sandy-haired, with dark Nabbani eyes from some colony ancestor, sat on a folding chair, although he looked as if he would rather be standing with his back to a wall and not looking up at the men and women who stood around, the last harsh words of debate trailing off as a blond man with a bloody bandage around his brow said, “—which you would throw away, and if you’d come sooner we . . . my lady!” And then, deliberate, with a deep bow, “My queen.”

“Lord Fairu.” Deyandara nodded to him, but she was looking around. No need to ask which was Lord Marnoch. A dark-haired young man’s strained face lit at the sight of her, and she made a sudden movement as if she would dart to him, checking it even before Lin’s restraining hand could do more than rise. But he smiled as if the sun had come out, and whispered to the woman at his side, who came around behind the lords to them, her bard’s ribbons blood-stained.

The high king was before her, striding across to take the girl by the shoulders. For a moment he had looked about to hug her but had checked the impulse at the last, fool, when being a brother before a king might have done him more good in the eyes of all, not least his sister. “Deyandara, where in the cold hells have you been?”

She flinched and pushed back from him. “Later,” she said unsteadily. “It will make a long tale. I’ve come from Dinaz Catairna—”

“Lady Lin, you were to find her and bring her to me,” Durandau interrupted, shifting his grip to Deyandara’s injured arm, as if he thought she might run off. She winced. “What were you thinking, to take her into the duina? And now you’re accused of being Ketsim’s ally, which I don’t believe, but—”

“The former was my lady’s wish, the latter, a misunderstanding, my lord,” Yeh-Lin said. “There was a matter I thought I had to see to. But my lady would—”

“Misunderstanding! From what I hear, you handed her over to the Catairnans and they promptly lost her to Ketsim. Great Gods, Deyandara, you’ve come from Ketsim, haven’t you? I should have expected that. Trust you to make a bad mess worse. I suppose she’s been sent to make terms for him,” he said to Ahjvar. “It won’t do the damned Grasslander any good, or the rest of you traitors either. Who are you, anyway? One of Hicca’s men? The girl’s my mother’s bastard, yes, but there’s no proof her true father was the Catairnan prince. She has no claim any but the desperate would acknowledge, and you can take that word back to your master Ketsim yourself without her, she’s certainly not going back to his bed.”

Did he hear himself, and wasn’t he planning to use her Catairnan blood himself? Desperate, hah, Durandau should be that.

Deyandara yelped with what sounded indignation as much as pain as her brother turned, dragging her, towards his chair again. Ahjvar caught his wrist.

“Let her go.”

Durandau did so, and Deyandara sprang away, hugging her left arm close against her chest, white-lipped. Grant that the man looked shocked as much at his sister’s recoil and pain as that someone had laid hands on him. Lords Marnoch and Fairu both came pushing through to stand behind her with the bard and Faullen, Marnoch almost as pale as the girl, which was smothered rage, Ahjvar judged. He let the king go and backed a single deliberate step before the spearmen could make up their minds quite what was happening. Useless bunch. If he had been Ketsim’s, sent to negotiate, he’d have given up on talk and handed the Grasslander the kingship he wanted by now. The high kingship and the heads of half the kings at the very least. Durandau certainly wasn’t going to be able to hold his title after this. Down in the Five Cities it was said Durandau had only ever been the compromise that prevented all-out war between the Duina Galatan and the Duina Noreia over the high kingship, the choice nobody really wanted and whom nobody really saw as a threat.

“Ketsim is dead,” Deyandara said. “Hicca is dead. Catairanach is—gone. This is over.”

That made a long moment’s silence. Marnoch broke it to ask practically, “Who holds Dinaz Catairna now, my lady?”

“It’s empty. Burnt. A pyre for Grasslanders dead of the southern pox,” Deyandara said. “Those who didn’t die there rode to Orsamoss.” She had been paying attention to the signs of the land as much as Ahjvar, then, or more, given the haze he’d ridden in. “You know better than we what became of them.” A bard’s cadences for the hall, but her smile was for Marnoch. Deyandara was finding her feet, though she herself might not yet have noticed it. Even Durandau didn’t interrupt. “Those of Hicca’s folk who remained fled the goddess’s wrath and are suffering her punishment, even now.”

“But Catairanach?” asked the bard. “My queen, you say gone?”

“Lost to us,” Deyandara said carefully. “But her sacrifice has freed the land.”

“The Red Masks failed,” said a woman who still stood at the high king’s empty chair. “They all died and fell at one time. You mean, the goddess gave herself to destroy them?”

Deyandara glanced at Yeh-Lin. If she gave any sign, Ahjvar didn’t see it.

“Catairanach is gone,” Deyandara repeated. “Marakand is defeated. The duina is free, all Praitan is safe.”

Save for the pox and the murrain and the Old Great Gods knew how many lordless Grasslanders and lost Marakanders roaming the borders of the road, to be preying on whatever travellers and lone steadings or small villages they could.

“Well,” said Durandau, “that makes things easier. Deyandara, tomorrow we’ll ride to Dinaz Catairna to see for ourselves. I’ll appoint you counsellors; perhaps Lady Elissa, for now, could take you in hand, since I am not pleased with Lady Lin’s—”

Marnoch stirred. “My lord, the queen has no need for you to name guardians over her, like a child, and the high king has no right to order who sits in a duina’s councils.”

Deyandara bit her lip and looked at Marnoch. “Am I your queen?”

“My lady, if we’d known you were carried to the dinaz, we’d never have left you. We thought they must have taken you to the captain from the city; we thought Ketsim would be with him and that if we had any chance of saving you, it was in joining Durandau to defeat this army. If we’d known . . .”

She moved to take Marnoch’s hand, and a deep breath with it. Durandau frowned.

“My brother the high king would make me queen of a folk who have already named me their queen,” she told the tent at large, the lords and the wizards and the bards, and two sandy-haired young lords who might be more brothers. “It’s not for him to decide that. It’s not for you, my lords and ladies of the duinas, only for the Catairnans and Catairanach, who is gone. I was Queen Cattiga’s only heir to survive this past year. I’ve seen Ketsim slain and the traitor Hicca, and witnessed Catairanach’s judgement on the traitors for this duina, as its queen, but to be lady of this folk and this land isn’t the road the Old Great Gods have laid before my feet. I know it. I would name Lord Marnoch to be king of the land and the folk that were Catairanach’s.”

And she had the judgement of words to stop there, to not lay all the arguments in his favour out, but to wait.

“Deya!” Marnoch protested, a whisper.

“It’s right,” she said, with another glance at Ahjvar. But maybe she could carry it on her own.

Maybe not. “Andara give me strength!” Durandau burst out. “Deyandara, you can’t just hand kingship over like an outgrown toy.” He grabbed for her again, as if she were six and he meant to march her from the tent for private chastisement.

This time Ahjvar put himself between them. His sword didn’t, quite, touch the high king.

“No,” he said, and stood where he was a moment, till the world stopped tilting. Old Great Gods prevent he didn’t fall on his face. Not yet, at any rate. Maybe this was dying at last.

Maybe this was a month with next to no sleep. If he was being a fool, drawing a blade on the high king in the very council of the seven kings . . . Ghu wasn’t here to say so. He hadn’t followed into the tent.

“If this man is one of yours, Marnoch, I want him out of here now,” Durandau said.

“He seems to be my lady’s,” Marnoch said evenly.

“Cairangorm’s champion,” Ahjvar declared. “Cairangorm’s heir. You did not make Deyandara queen and you will not deny her right to step aside for another, and you will not deny me, in this land that was my father’s, the right to add my voice to hers. The kingship falls on Marnoch of the Red Hills. It’s time the leopard and the bull both were set aside, and Durandau, you can face me in the circle if you want to contest this, or name a champion to do so, but you do not manhandle your wounded sister as if she’s some captive brigand while I am still on my feet.”

Durandau’s hand was on his sword. Damned gods, he did not want to kill Deya’s brother in front of her, but the man wasn’t in a temper for a fight to mere blooding. It wasn’t going to go to the circle and any formality of law anyway. Durandau was going to attack him as an outlaw in the hall, and they would have a bloody free-for-all before it was done.

But the man, breathing heavily through his nose, slowly took his hand away from his hilt, waved back his bench-companions and spearmen. Not, after all, a fool. Of the kings and lords, other than Durandau’s own, none had moved in to back him. The high king had laid hands on a queen of the folk in violence, and most were not sure, quite, but what Ahjvar had the right to stand where he stood.

“I don’t intend my sister any harm,” Durandau said, sounding more baffled than angry. “How in the cold hells could you think that? But I don’t see by what right you speak for her, whoever you are.”

“By what right do you?”

“She’s not of age.”

“She’s travelled a longer road than you, alone, across the Tributary Lands and to the skirts of the Five Cities, and to Marakand itself, taking on a bard’s duties all untrained for them, when there was no one else the goddess could send.” Words grated. He felt as though he were still swallowing ash and soot. “She’s seen more blood shed in this war and endured more trials for her land’s sake than you. And my lord, you sent her away from your dinaz and her own god with only a lone woman to accompany her, like any young apprentice, and you made no effort to find what had become of her, after that. You made no provision to guard her on her road. You never gave her another thought, until you realized the Duina Catairna was without a king and that she might have a claim, and even then you didn’t rush, coming as you thought to put her where she had already been put by her own folk. She’s proven herself a servant of this land and a woman fit to know her own mind by her deeds, as the goddess of the land would attest, were she still here to do so.” He could still lie kingly when he had to. Ghu hadn’t corrupted him from that. “You’ve only shown yourself a neglectful guardian.”

An older king who had been whispering with his spearmen stepped forward. “As her maternal grandfather, I have a voice in this as well. And my grandson the high king, with respect, is only her half-brother. I will claim guardianship—”

“Why haven’t the Five Cities overrun you all yet?” Ahjvar muttered, not quietly enough. Someone snickered, away behind the high king’s back. “My lord of the Lellandi, we can argue this till she does come of age, but—”

There had been some other whispering debating going on behind him all the while, women’s voices. Deyandara and the bard, with deeper interjections from Marnoch, mostly consisting of negatives. Now Deyandara ducked around him. Ahjvar checked his impulse to fling her out of harm’s way, lowered his sword instead, and leaned on it. The girl put herself deliberately where stepping back a mere few inches would have her shoulders against his chest. The little black dog gave a sharp bark and bounded forward. Yeh-Lin raised a finger, pointed at the ground, and it sat, quivering, eyes fixed on the high king, but its teeth were bared. Comedy, the high king defied by a cattle-dog, but no one was watching it.

“I’m a widow,” Deyandara said tersely. “And that, my lord brother, gives me my majority and the right to speak for myself.”

Durandau looked, for a moment, uncommonly like a fish, gaping at flies.

“Who?” he demanded indignantly. “You had no right marrying without my permission, and especially at your age.”

“Well, nobody asked you!” she snapped. “Or me either, if it comes to that, but married I was, and widowed by the next morning, and if you want witnesses, I’m sure you can hunt down some of Hicca’s men who were at my wedding feast, as my lord Ah—Catairlau didn’t kill quite all of them.

Thank you, Deya. Three, was it, he had slain? Hardly any. And it was hardly a legal marriage: abduction and intended rape, no god bearing witness and even if it had been otherwise, unconsummated—but if she could carry them past all that unquestioned. . . . Once get Marnoch acknowledged by even some of the kings . . . it would be so much simpler to settle it in the circle, by the sword’s edge. Which was why he was no fit king, certainly, such thinking. Catairlau? he heard whispered by the Catairnan bard, who had let Cairangorm’s heir pass unremarked, or had missed it. Forget that. How many bards were here, how many voices who knew the law? The one at his back was not asking the questions a speaker of the law should, at this point.

“You married Hicca?”

“I was married to Ketsim the Grasslander, and my lords and ladies, and my lord brothers, and grandfather of the Lellandi, if you all hadn’t sat so long in your tents waiting and hoping the pox would do your work for you, there would be many fewer widows and orphans in my duina now. I will speak for myself. I have bloody well earned that right—”

Not bardlike, that phrasing. Keeping bad company lately. He saw Yeh-Lin’s lip twitch, out of the corner of his eye. Also not true, that lives would have been saved if only they had acted more swiftly. The Red Masks would have broken them and left the lands kingless, if Ghu hadn’t come for him. But shame them, yes, she had the right idea there, because there was still Marakand, and the temple might yet raise a real army from the city, without relying on the necromancy of its false god, and the iron road from the forest still crossed Praitan to the Five Cities.

A crane flew in the open door of the tent, silencing Deyandara. The white wings shed a silver light over them as she landed, rustling and settling her plumage.

“Orsa,” he said, and bowed. That much courtesy he could find.

“Catairlau. And Deyandara. Who speak with full right for this land.” Her voice was human enough, soft and high, and gave the words an ironic twist as she bobbed her head to them and turned to give Durandau a long, head-tilted look along her beak. The high king did not bow but dropped to his knees.

She reared back and beat her wings. Everyone there went down on their knees, save Ahjvar himself and the devil. He wasn’t kneeling to the gods who had turned their backs on him, however well-disposed they might be now, and the devil merely folded her arms and looked sardonic. The look the goddess gave her was equally so, though how a crane could convey that much expression . . .

“The goddesses of this land have spoken through the web of waters, and the gods through the deep bones of the hills, and they affirm, Marnoch of the Red Hills will be king of the duina, as Catairlau who was king has said and Deyandara who is queen has said. Marnoch will speak with the gods of the hills and the goddesses of the waters, a new god will be chosen to give his name to the land. The high king will acknowledge this, or there will be a new high king, for even Praitanna of the Avain Praitanna, the great river, the goddess of the Duina Praitanna, the heart of the seven kingdoms, even she says, it shall be so. The folk of this duina have suffered the neglect and disdain of their chosen goddess long enough. Catairanach is gone. Let no one call her back.”

Feathers drew out like tendrils of mist, still glowing as if caught in sunlight, and she drifted, a shadow-bird, then a form like a child, to Deyandara, putting arms about her, with the kneeling girl’s head bowed to her shoulder. If the goddess spoke to her it was in silence, for Deyandara alone, but then she raised solemn silver eyes to Ahjvar.

“Your place is not here, Catairlau,” he heard, but the goddess’s lips did not move.

“I know,” he said roughly. The black dog wagged its tail, all adoration of the goddess, but nothing else stirred, as if they all hung in the dream of a moment, stretched long.

“I am sorry,” Orsa said. She raised one hand towards him, didn’t touch, but he could feel the damp, cool air of dawn about her. “There is too much death in you, and no peace for you here. Catairanach is sunk deep in forgetting, but the thing that you carry lives without her and is still beyond us. Go.”

He sheathed his sword, fumbling. It took several tries. Bent to kiss the top of Deyandara’s head. He didn’t think she knew he was there, to know it was farewell. So the gods took that, too. “Be well, granddaughter,” he wished her. A breeze flapped the tent door and stirred Deyandara’s hair, touched Marnoch’s where he knelt, his eyes fixed on Deya, not the small goddess.

“You,” he said, because it wanted saying even if the man couldn’t hear, “do well by her. And come the winter solstice, they’ll be electing a new high king. Durandau can’t hold it after this. None of these here have proven they deserve such a place. You see it’s you. Time it came back to us.”

“And you accuse me of wanting to make emperors,” Yeh-Lin said. “I’ll tell him. I’ll tell them. I,” and she raised eyebrows at Orsa, “am not going anywhere, yet. I swore to serve Deyandara. I think I shall do so. For a little longer.” She grinned. “If only to tease these little gods.”

Orsa did not look best pleased at that.

Good.

So he left them.

The long shadows were falling from the west, and away from the pavilion of the high king’s council, the business of the camp was going on, loudly, both in mourning and triumph. The captains of the kings would be pursuing the Marakander survivors, disarming them, chivvying them to the road. If they wanted less trouble, they should see their enemies had mounts and food and give them escort, Marakander and Grasslander alike, till they were well into the rising hills before the pass, but that wasn’t Ahjvar’s affair to order. Nobody paid him any attention. He felt slow as an old man, clumsy as a drunk, and sick with he didn’t know what. Weariness. Hurt. He would call curses down on the gods of all Praitan, except he had given up cursing and he was too tired. He didn’t know where Ghu had gone.

But the dogs found him, nosing in one from each side, as if he needed herding, and then Ghu was there, a shadow battered and smoke-blackened and hollow-eyed as he himself must be.

“Sleep,” Ahjvar said with weary relief. “And if I don’t—you promised.”

“I know.”

He could feel the sunset, the darkness, a weight pressing on him. He could feel the hag, too, still wailing for her mother and the shattering of her world, twisting, a worm in his heart. He stumbled at hollows and tussocks. If he fell, Ahjvar was going to lie where he landed, and the Praitan army could damn well go around him. A few dogs came alert and watched them, and horses turned, prick-eared and nostrils flaring, but the men and women didn’t look, except maybe one or two, wizards, perhaps, who looked, and frowned, and looked away. They were shadow, that was all, and the mist of Orsa’s swamp; the little brook that wound between the hills was filling the valleys with fog. Ahjvar followed Ghu down into it.