The Prior of Harndon was still mounted, wet, stiff from cold, and hoping for clean borrowed clothes when the Grand Squire ran to meet him at the gate of the citadel.
“Thank God you are here,” Lord Shawn said.
Prior Wishart shook his head. “All we need is feed for our horses and dry clothes,” he said. “We need to ride on.” But as if conceding the point, he slid from his saddle.
“Ride on?” Lord Shawn put a hand to his chest. “Damn it, the woods are full of worms. Nothing can move between here and Lissen Carak. The not-dead have closed the road.”
“Despite which inconvenience, we will be going on,” the prior said.
Squires and pages were running about, linkboys illuminated the citadel’s courtyard, and the chargers were being taken into the stables or dried right there, despite the cold air.
“You cannot chance it in the dark,” Shawn said.
There were almost a hundred Order knights, and another fifty squires. They dismounted like automatons.
The Grand Squire frowned. “Damn it, Ser John. Your people are exhausted.”
“If we don’t ride tonight,” Wishart shot back, “we can’t even make the attempt until tomorrow at sunset. Do you have news of the armies?”
“I’ll get you the latest,” he said. Then Ser Shawn pushed Wishart into the hall, where a big cup of hot soup was put in his big fist—vegetable soup, full of beans. He drank it off the way a yeoman might quaff a foaming cup of ale. Ser Shawn ignored the slight figure by the prior to fetch him another cup of soup with his own hands, and then he checked on the men in the yard, but the preparations had been thorough, and men were being fed as efficiently as the horses.
He summoned his own squire and sent him for the day’s messages. “Prior? There’s little enough news. The earl and the count have linked up in the west, but our enemy presses them hard.”
A black-and-white-clad messenger came in with a messenger bird on his wrist. He was as white as the right half of his tabard. “My lord,” he said to Shawn.
Shawn took the new message. He closed his eyes and then opened them again. “Damn,” he said carefully.
The prior raised an eyebrow, and the Grand Squire handed him the flimsy.
“The enemy stormed the entrenchments at Lissen Carak,” Ser Shawn said slowly. “All our work …”
Wishart seemed to sag. “So now the place is under siege.”
“You won’t get in without an army,” Shawn said. “I’m sorry, Prior. But we need you here.”
The Prior of Harndon could be seen to be praying.
Harndon—Queen Desiderata of Alba
Night over Harndon.
The lights burned in the queen’s apartments in the great tower of the castle. The garrison was down to the sick and the wounded; everyone else had marched with Ser Ranald.
Gerald Random sat at a desk by the foot of the throne. The figure of the queen sat above him, her chin in her fist, a picture of annoyance. She wore the usual brown velvet, and her hair seemed to glow with a life of its own, as if magicked.
“I wanted to go,” she said. And turned her head away. “I’m useless here. Everyone will forget me!”
Random was looking through a stack of documents, each one representing a task more difficult than the last: wills in probate from plague victims, the wholesale replacement of the Galle-tainted Council of the Realm and many of the aldermen; a list of attainted families.
Somewhere, in the passages beyond the hall, there was a sound that made him raise his head. Ser Gerald looked, squinted, and asked one of the new maids to light the torches.
She went to the brazier and Ser Gerald heard the unmistakable sound of steel on steel.
“Guard!” he roared. Two of the royal guardsmen responded, coming from their alcove to the right, both of them with pole arms.
The first sprouted a cloth yard shaft in his chest. He dropped his halberd and fell to his knees, and his face worked as he sought to say something, but his wits were already going. He took another arrow anyway.
Then they were coming in at two doors: hooded men in white, with bows, and some with swords and bucklers, the swords already dirty and dull with death.
Ser Gerald drew his arming sword. He had a buckler on his belt, a fine one of steel and leather, and he put it on his fist as he hobbled to put himself between the dirty white figures and the throne.
The bigger of the royal guardsmen cut one of the Jacks almost in half with a swing of his halberd, took an arrow in the side, and cut again.
Random cut an arrow out of the air and then pushed forward on his wooden foot, anxious to close before they feathered him.
There were only seven of them now; long odds, but winnable. Random had seen worse.
The woman on the throne was screaming.
His target chose to shoot, and missed him, ten feet away; a big oaf in a filthy straw hat, with a wide fool’s grin. Random cut his bow hand on the rising stroke from his right side, and then, as the man cringed away, killed him with a thrust to the neck, imbracatto, and went for the next man, who was entangled with the other guardsman; Random stabbed him in the back—too hard—and lost his sword in the wound as the man fell, tearing the hilt from his hand and making him stumble.
“Death to the queen!” shouted the tallest man. He loosed a shaft.
Random got the dying man’s sword. It wasn’t as good as his own but it was in his hand, and he used his buckler to cover a blow from his left side because he couldn’t move his feet fast enough to make the correct parry.
There were more of the dirty white cotes coming into the throne room, and the woman on the throne was already full of arrows. She hadn’t even tried to protect herself, and the glorious hair faded away with the glamour that supported it.
Random backed, and backed; avoided tripping over a corpse, and managed to sever a wrist with a rising cut. He was headed for the small door at his back—the door to the cells. He knew it all too well.
They crowded around him like amateurs, instead of shooting him down; he took a cut across his buckler arm, and as the man left himself overextended, broke the arm with the pretty steel buckler and then killed him, a blow through the bridge of his nose while he was stunned, and then Random had his back to the door and took a wound through his body, a thrust, in and out, and something was running over his abdomen. And the damned door was locked, and Random was pretty sure that his wife would never see him alive again.
“Death to the queen!” shouted a woman’s voice. “Where is the child?”
There were more shouts, but Random had, despite the wound in his guts, landed another heavy blow, cutting between a man’s buckler and his sword, opening him from breastbone to groin so that intestines glistened. The man fell back into his mates, and in that instant Random threw a little thrust and it went home—a little sloppy because he was probably dying—but still neat enough, grating over the man’s breastbone and up into his throat.
He tried to feel behind himself again for the door latch, thrust out, made two heavy cuts to clear a space, and took another wound, this one really bad, in the back, because he had no armour. He tried to turn and found that instead he was falling.
Oh well.
He realized that he must be on the ground, and for a moment he panicked, because they would eat him. But then he realized that they were merely men; he wasn’t at Lissen Carak.
“God save the queen,” he said quite clearly.
“Find the child!” shouted the tall man. “Now!”
There were footsteps, and the tall man was over him. Random could feel him; could all but feel his anger.
Random didn’t really care, as he was slipping into the darkness. God save the queen, he thought. His lips formed the words.
“Do you know who I am, Master Random?” the man asked.
Random didn’t care enough to answer. God save the queen.
“I’m Nat Tyler, Master Random. I’m the King o’ the Jacks, and I’ve just killed your precious queen
, and now I’ll …”
He stopped talking, because Ser Random’s eyes had just developed the glassy stare of the dead, and the knight could not hear him anymore.
Lessa was searching the apartments upstairs. There were a handful of servants, and she and the other Jacks killed them as they went; two of the men laughed, hunting a screaming girl room by room, until they found her behind the hangings. Then they each shot her.
In the last room there was a cradle, but the cradle was empty, and Lessa swore.
She turned from the empty cradle to find Kit Crowbeard in the doorway with a sword in his hand. He wore armour, and looked considerably younger.
His sword was dripping with blood.
He nodded to her, as if they were meeting in a tavern. “Good evening,” he said.
“The babe!” she said. “He’s not here.”
Crowbeard nodded, glanced over his shoulder at the rooms beyond, and back at her. “No matter,” he said. “We have the castle.”
“No matter?” she spat. “Nits make lice. They all have to die.”
Crowbeard nodded, as if thinking about what she was saying.
“You promised!” she said. “All of them.”
He stepped closer, a slight smile on his lips, as if he might kiss her.
She sighed. “Really,” she began.
Crowbeard shrugged, and thrust her through the throat.
Lessa grabbed at the blade, shock warring with pain.
He put an arm around the back of her head like a lover and lowered her carefully to the floor.
“Sorry, my dear,” Crowbeard said. “I liked you, but there’s been a change of plan.”
He was a meticulous man, and he regretted having to do the deed; he withdrew the sword without catching it on the vertebrae of her neck, and stepped clear of the falling body to avoid getting blood on his armour. Then he cleaned the sword on her dirty white cote. He really had liked her, but he also thought that anyone who trusted the Earl of Towbray was too stupid to live.
He walked back out of the royal apartments, leaving the other dead, servants and Jacks, artistically draped over one another. He collected his three best men, the men who had performed the bloody artistry, and went back to the great hall, where the Earl of Towbray sat on the bloody throne from which he’d just thrown the corpse.
Two of Crowbeard’s men had Tyler.
“You fucking traitor,” Tyler said. “You …”
Towbray smiled. “I am a traitor many times over,” he said. “Why on earth would you choose to trust me? But I must say, your people did a fine job. Quite the massacre. You’ve left me very few murders to commit.” He smiled at Crowbeard. “Ah, Kit. I have no further need of Master Tyler.”
Crowbeard walked over. Tyler spat at him, and pulled, very hard, at the men who held him, but they not only had strong hands, they had armour and steel gauntlets.
“Ash will have you all! I will be avenged!” Tyler roared.
Towbray raised both eyebrows, as if appalled at what he heard.
“Ash sends you his regards,” Towbray said. “He’s finished with you now.”
Crowbeard ran the old Jack through, just under the jaw.
“Lay him by Ser Gerald,” Towbray said. “Ser Gerald will have died a hero’s death, attempting to protect the queen. I think he’ll have a statue, don’t you, Kit? Alas, just before we could come and restore order.” Towbray smiled. “And now, I am king.”
“Your Grace, I regret to say that the boy is not here.” Crowbeard was so used to giving his master bad news that he just said it.
Towbray shrugged. “Gone with the army?” he asked. “Inconvenient.”
“Depends who has him,” Crowbeard said. He was looking at the dead woman on the floor, and he didn’t like what he saw.
Lissen Carak
Darkness before dawn.
The time when old men die, and when sentinels fall asleep, and when the world changes while no one is looking. Somewhere, out in the curtain of stars that was the embodiment of the infinite music of all the spheres of creation, a star moved, aligning with another star; the dance continued, the endless motes of life and light floating in the endless darkness.
By whatever mechanism the spheres drove, the gates began to open across the worlds.
Close, in metaphysical terms, to Lissen Carak, the will awoke to the movement of the gates. It had waited with infinite impatience as its billions of constituent beings yearned to be reunited with sisters and brothers and cousins across the million spheres; waited, and then, in a twinkle of a star, they were right there.
The will reached across the gap of stars as the gates aligned, and rattled the gate, but it was locked.
The will had had an aeon to plan its next moves. It attacked the lock.
Miriam awoke to Novice Maria Magdalena shaking her.
“Madam, madam, the gate!” the girl was shrieking.
Miriam shot to her feet, her nightgown flapping. “Gabriel said five twenty,” she said.
The bells were ringing four.
“Choir!” she sang, in the real and the aethereal.
One hundred and thirty-nine nuns and novices leapt from their beds, put their feet into sheepskin shoes, and ran for the chapel, leaving prie-dieux and psalters and paternosters, hairbrushes and combs and mirrors and beds and bolsters behind them.
Every one of them knew this was the hour, and like soldiers, they were ready.
Mostly ready.
On the floor of the chapel, two middle-aged women were already singing, working their way through the end of the early matins. Despite the air of crisis outside the chapel, inside it was dark and calm, lit by a single vigil candle, which reflected just a little from gilt and gold and polished silver and brass; a hint of beauty like a brief sight of a veiled woman’s face.
Sister Katheryn, a slight, birdlike figure, was already at her place; their lead voice in the right-hand choir. By ancient tradition, the abbey had two choirs—for special feasts they sang together—and a dozen Alban composers vied to write them masses. Most days, only one choir sang, in a strict rota.
This morning, both choirs were coming in, and Sister Elisabeth stepped up to the bema of the left choir, her face rapt in concentration. Sister Elisabeth was tall, broad shouldered, her long fingers caressing the jeweled cross at her throat while her lips moved through the last invocation of the morning prayer with Sister Katheryn across the aisle.
Miriam went to her place. She peered into the aethereal and saw the mist gathering around the gate, and indeed, she looked through her mirror at the face of the gate itself.
There was light behind it.
And pressure. The pressure was building. So far, the wards handled it easily, but a curious amount of ops was being drained, even with the improvements that Sister Amicia had built into the systems.
She raised a hand and pointed at Sister Elisabeth.
Sister Elisabeth took the time to finish the Holy Office. She sang the Ave Maria, and Sister Katheryn’s voice soared with her. Many other sisters, just coming in, took up the well-known words, and Miriam channeled the power, effortlessly, into the wards.
The pressure against them suddenly exploded.
In a heartbeat, half of her stored reserves were squandered in the wards; almost as much ops as Thorn had managed to drain away in the whole of his siege.
Miriam was not an easy woman to frighten. She pursed her lips and raised a small black wand, tipped in gold.
“Kyrie,” she said.
Ninety-two voices began to rise in the triumphant opening. Other women ran, ran, dropping whatever last-moment need had delayed them. The clear, high voices rose; steady, powerful, beautiful.
They sang in the aethereal, and now they were a choir of a hundred powers, and their pitch and melody, harmony and tempo were thought, and worship, and spirit, and their power was vast, and their adversary was stopped in its tracks, unable to scale the sheer ice of their perfection.
But the adversary had million
s of voices. And what they lacked in precision and harmony, they made up for in unity and purpose and they were loud, in the aethereal. Their noise peaked, but through them, like a knife cutting an old curtain, the choir of Lissen Carak sang, and the two leaders found the center of the adversary’s sound and used it as a bass on which to build their soprano, and their voices soared, and the adversary’s music was merely part of their music, and for one timeless aeon, the whole of the adversary’s power was channeled into the wards of the ancient gate.
Miriam did not laugh, or smile, in triumph. Instead, she pointed in the real at the left choir, and Sister Elisabeth fell silent.
To the right-hand choir, she said, “Gloria.”
The battle for the gates had begun. It could end only one way—in defeat—unless a miracle occurred.
Sunrise was still an hour away, although the sky was beginning to show light.
Gavin, Earl of Westwall, was at Southford. He’d driven his vanguard all night; he’d refused them sleep and food, and he’d all but beat some of them with whips to keep them moving. And now, in the first pale, desperate light of day, his hardened militia and his Morean mountaineers splashed through the ford, too tired to worry about the cold, and began to form on the far bank.
They formed a hollow square, and Tamsin began to work to protect them against the Odine. But the worms were still. When terrified Moreans came across a huddle of them, they were as unmoving as stones, or pinecones, which they more resembled when seen in the real.
The sky was pink in the east when Count Gareth’s knights began to splash across the ford.
Greatly daring, a Morean corporal took a shovel from the chapel at the ford and used it to gather a few dozen of the worms, which were lying about in terrible plenty in the nearby stand of maple trees. His mates had a fire, and some sausage. He took the shovel full of worms, and threw them into the fire.
They burned. But then all the other worms began to awake.
The Albin River—Harmodius