At the very beginning of spring a wizard was detected using his magic in the southern highlands, but the Tracker and the twenty-five men Siferval had immediately sent after him had been slaughtered in a pass by outlaws, to the last man. An act of arrogance and revolt almost impossible to believe.
And he couldn’t even properly exact retribution: the villages and farms scattered through the highlands hated the outlaws as much as or more than the Barbadians did. And it had been an Ember Night, with no decent man abroad to see who might have done this unprecedented deed. Siferval sent a hundred men from Fort Ortiz to hunt the brigands down. They found no trace. Only long-dead campfires in the hills. It was as if the twenty-five men had been slain by ghosts: which, predictably, is what the people of the highlands were already saying. It had been an Ember Night after all, and everyone knew the dead were abroad on such nights. The dead, hungry for retribution.
‘How clever of the dead to use new-fletched arrows,’ Siferval’s written report had offered sardonically, when he sent two captains to carry the tidings north. His men had retreated quickly in whey-faced terror at the expression on Alberico’s face. It was, after all, the Third Company which had allowed twenty-five of its men to be killed, and had then sent out another hundred incompetents to do no more than elicit laughter, wandering about in the hills.
It was maddening. Alberico had been forced to fight back an urge to torch the Certandan hamlet nearest to those hills, but he knew how destructive that would be in the longer run. It would undermine all the benefits of the focused restraint he’d used in the affair of the Sandreni plot. That night his eyelid began to droop again, the way it had in the early autumn.
Then, very shortly after, came the news from Quileia.
He had nourished such hopes there after the shocking fall of the Matriarchy. It was such an enormous, ripe new market for trade, an absolute harvest for the Empire. And one, most importantly, that would be brought into Barbadior’s aegis by that ever-vigilant guardian of the western borders of the Empire, Alberico of the Eastern Palm.
So much rich hope and promise there, and so little actual prospect of difficulty. Even if this Marius, this crippled priestess-killer on his precarious throne, chose to trade west with Ygrath as well as east that was all right. Quileia was more than large enough to offer bounty both ways. For a time. Soon enough it should be possible to make the uncouth fellow see the many-faceted advantages of focusing his dealings towards Barbadior.
In the evolution of the Barbadian Empire there had emerged a number of ways, a great many time-honoured ways, some subtle, some rather less so, of causing men to see things in a particular light. Alberico had a few thoughts of his own about even newer means of persuading petty monarchs to view matters usefully. He fully intended to explore them, once he was home.
Home, as Emperor. For that, after all, was the point, the point of absolutely everything. Except that the events of the spring utterly refused to cooperate.
Marius of Quileia sent a gratifyingly swift reply to Alberico’s latest benevolent offer to trade. An emissary delivered it directly into the hands of Siferval in Fort Ortiz.
Unfortunately, that brief gratification had been smashed and annihilated when the letter reached Astibar, carried north this time, in recognition of its importance, by Siferval himself. Couched in unexpectedly sophisticated language it contained a message that, however politely and circuitously phrased, was flat and clear: the Quileian regretfully judged that Brandin of Ygrath was the greater, firmer power in the Palm, and as such, and being but green in his own power, he could not risk incurring the anger of the King of Ygrath by trading with Alberico, a minor lord of the Empire, much as he might want to.
It was a letter that could easily drive a man into a killing rage.
Fighting for self-control, Alberico had seen cringing apprehension in his clerks and advisors, and even a quickly veiled fear in the eyes of the captain of the Third Company. Then, when Siferval handed over the second letter, the one, he explained, that he had so cleverly arranged to extract and copy from the saddle pouch of the overly garrulous Quileian emissary, Alberico felt all control deserting him.
He had been forced to turn away, to stride alone to the windows at the back of the offices of state and draw gasping breaths of air to calm his boiling mind. He could feel the telltale tremor beginning again in his right eyelid; the fluttering he’d never been able to get rid of since that night he’d almost died in the Sandreni Woods. His huge hands grasping the window-ledge with a grip of iron, he struggled for the equanimity that would let him carefully weigh the implications of this intercepted message, but calm was a swiftly receding illusion and his thoughts in the morning sunlight were black and foaming like the sea in storm.
Senzio! The Quileian fool sought to link himself with those dissolute puppets in the ninth province! It was almost impossible to credit that a man, however new to the world stage, could be such an imbecile.
His back to his advisors and his captains, staring blindly out the window down upon the too-bright Grand Square, Alberico abruptly began to consider how this was going to look to the wider world. To the part of the world that mattered: the Emperor; and those who had his ear, and who saw themselves as rivals to Alberico. How would the tidings be read, if Brandin of Ygrath was busily trading south, if Senzian merchants were blithely sailing past the Archipelago and down the coast beyond Tregea and the mountains to Quileian ports and all the fabled goods of that land, so long kept to themselves under the priestesses?
If the Empire alone was denied access to this new market. Denied access because Alberico of Barbadior was judged too infirm in his power here as compared to the Ygrathen in the west … Alberico felt himself beginning to sweat; a cold trickle of moisture slid down his side. There was a spasm of pain in his chest as a muscle clenched near his heart. He forced himself to breathe slowly until it passed.
From the source of so much promise it suddenly seemed as if a dagger had materialized, more sharp and deadly than any enemy of his back in Barbadior might have fashioned.
Senzio. He had been thinking and dreaming about the ninth province all through the months of ice and snow, seeking a way in his restless nights to break out, to regain control of a situation that increasingly seemed to be operating upon him, instead of he upon it, as master of his destiny.
And that had been in the winter, even before this news from beyond the mountains.
Then, shortly after, even as the first flowers began blooming in the gardens of Astibar, there was more. In the very same week word came from the west that someone had tried to kill Brandin of Ygrath.
Had tried, and failed. For one blissful night Alberico played out glorious scenarios of triumph in his sleep. Dreaming, over and over again, so keen was the pleasure, that the assassin—using a crossbow, they had learned—had succeeded in his purpose. Oh, it would have been so perfect, it would have been timed so flawlessly for him, dovetailing so neatly with his needs. It would have had to be seen as a gift, a shining upon his face, from the high gods of the Empire. The entire Peninsula of the Palm would have been his in a year, in half a year. Quileia’s crippled monarch, needing the outer world so desperately, would have had to embrace whatever terms of trade Alberico then chose to offer him.
And the Empire? His, a year after all of that, at the very worst.
With such an unchallenged power base here, he would not have even needed to wait for the ailing Emperor to finally die. He could have sailed home with his armies as the champion and the hero of the people. Having first showered them with grain, with gold, with freely flowing wine from the Palm, and all the newly rediscovered wealth of Quileia.
It would have been glorious. For that one night Alberico let himself dream, smiling in his sleep. Then he woke, and came down the stairs again to the offices of state and found all three of his captains waiting, grim-faced. A new messenger was there with them. From the west again, a single day after the first, with news that smashed twenty years of balancing
into tiny, sharp-edged fragments that would never again be reassembled as they had been.
Brandin had abdicated in Ygrath and named himself King of the Western Palm.
On Chiara, the messenger reported, trembling at his lord’s visage, they had begun celebrating within hours of the announcement.
‘And the Ygrathens?’ Karalius of the First asked sharply, though he had no real right to speak.
‘Most will go home,’ the messenger said. ‘If they stay they must become citizens, only equal citizens, of the new kingdom.’
‘You say they will go home,’ Alberico said, his gaze flat and heavy, masking the feverish churning of his emotions. ‘Do you know this, have you been told this, or do you only guess it to be so?’
The messenger turned grey, stammering some reply about logic and obvious consequences and what anyone could predict …
‘Have this man’s tongue cut out then have him killed,’ Alberico said. ‘I don’t care how. Feed him to the animals. My messengers bring me the news they learn. I draw what conclusions are to be drawn.’
The messenger fainted dead away, toppling sideways to the floor. It could be seen that he had soiled himself. Grancial of the Second Company signalled quickly for two men to carry him out.
Alberico didn’t bother to watch. In a way he was glad the man had spoken as fatuously as he had. He had needed an excuse to kill just then.
He gestured with two fingers, and his steward hastily ushered everyone out of the room but the three captains. Not that any of the lesser officials seemed inclined to linger at that particular moment. Which was as it should be. He didn’t trust any of them very much.
He didn’t entirely trust his captains either, but he needed them, and they needed him, and he had been careful to keep them at odds and on edge with each other. It was a workable arrangement. Or it had been, until now.
But now was what mattered, and Brandin had just thrown the peninsula into chaos. Not that the Palm actually mattered, not in itself. It was a gateway, a stepping-stone. He had moved out of Barbadior as a young man, in order to rise in the world and return as a leader in his prime, and there was no point, no point at all to twenty years of exile if he could not sail home in triumph. In more than triumph. In mastery.
He turned his back on the captains and went to the window, surreptitiously massaging his eye. He waited, to see who would speak first, and what he would say. There was a fear growing within him that he was at pains to hide. Nothing was falling right, none of his caution and discretion seemed to have borne the fruit it should.
Karalius said, very softly from behind him, ‘My lord, there is opportunity here. There is great opportunity.’
Which is exactly what he was afraid the man would say. Afraid, because he knew it was true and because it meant moving again, and quickly, committing himself to dangerous, decisive action. But action here and not in the Empire, not back home, where he had been readying himself to return. War far away in this savage, obdurate peninsula where he could lose all, a lifetime’s sowing, in striving for a conquest he hardly cared about.
‘We had best go carefully,’ Grancial said quickly. More to oppose Karalius than anything else, Alberico knew. But he noted that we.
He turned and fixed the Second Company captain with a wintry glance. ‘I will indeed do nothing without thought,’ he said, placing clear emphasis on the first word. Grancial flicked his eyes away. Siferval smiled beneath his curling blond moustaches.
Karalius did not. His expression remained sober and thoughtful. He was the best of the three, Alberico knew. Also the most dangerous, for the two things went hand in hand in such a man. Alberico moved around behind his huge oak desk and sat down again. He looked up at the First Company leader and waited.
Karalius said again, ‘There is opportunity now. There will be turmoil in the west, disruption, Ygrathens sailing home. Shall I tell you what I think?’ His pale skin was flushed with a growing excitement. Alberico understood that: the man saw chances of his own, land and wealth for himself.
It would be a mistake to let Karalius unfold too much. He would end up thinking the planning was his. Alberico said, ‘I know exactly what you think, to the very words you would speak. Be silent. I know everything that will be happening in the west except one thing: we don’t yet know how many of the Ygrathen army will stay. My guess is that most will leave, rather than be lowered to the level of people they have had mastery over all these years. They did not come here to become inconsequential figures in the Palm.’
‘Neither,’ said Siferval pointedly, ‘did we.’
Alberico suppressed his anger yet again. It seemed he had been forced to do that so much of late with these three. But they had their own purposes, their own long drawn-out plans, and wealth and fame were at the heart of them. As they had to be for all ambitious men in the Empire: towards what else should an ambitious man aspire?
‘I am aware of that,’ he said, as calmly as he could.
‘Then what do we do?’ Grancial asked. A real question, not a challenge. Grancial was the weakest and the most loyal—because of that weakness—of the three.
Alberico looked up. At Karalius, not at Grancial.
‘You gather my armies,’ he said deliberately, though his pulse was racing very fast. This was dangerous and might be final, every instinct within him told him that. But he also knew that time and the gods had thrown a glittering gem down towards him from the heavens, and if he did not move it would fall away.
‘You gather my armies in all four provinces and take them north. I want them massed together as soon as possible.’
‘Where?’ Karalius’s eyes were almost shining with anticipation.
‘Ferraut, of course. On the northern border with Senzio.’ Senzio, he was thinking. The ninth. The jewel. The battleground.
‘How long will it take you?’ he asked the three of them.
‘Five weeks, no more,’ Grancial said quickly.
‘Four,’ said Siferval, smiling.
‘The First Company,’ said Karalius, ‘will be on the border three weeks from now. Count on it.’
‘I will,’ said Alberico. And dismissed them.
He sat alone at his desk for a long time after, toying with a paperweight, thinking upon all sides of this, over and around and about. But however he looked upon it all the pieces seemed to slide into place. There was power to be grasped here, and triumph, he could almost see that shimmering jewel falling through the air, over water, over land, into his reaching hand.
He was acting. Shaping events himself, not being impacted upon. His enemy would be vulnerable, enormously so, until this new chaos settled in the west. Quileia’s choice could be forced and be no choice at all. The Empire could be made to see, on the eve of his final journey home, just what his sorcery and his armies could do. The time was offering a jewel, truly, falling from the heavens, waiting to be clasped. To be set upon his brow.
He was still uneasy though, almost uncannily so, sitting alone as the morning brightened, trying to convince himself of the truth of all this shining promise. He was more than uneasy; his mouth was dry and the spring sunlight seemed strange to him, almost painful. He wondered if he was ill. There was something gnawing away like a rat in darkness at the unlit corners of his thoughts. He forced himself to turn towards it, trying to make a torch of his careful rationality, to look within himself and root out this anxiety.
And then indeed he did see it, and understood, in that same moment, that it could not be rooted out, nor ever be acknowledged to a living soul.
For the truth, the poisonous gall of truth, was that he was afraid. Deathly afraid, in the deepest inward places of his being, of this other man. Of Brandin of Ygrath, now Brandin of the Western Palm. The name had been changed, the balance changed utterly.
The truth of fear was exactly as it had been for almost twenty years.
A short while later he left the room and went down the stairs and underground to see how they killed the messenger.
Alais knew exactly why she was being granted this unprecedented gift of a journey in the Sea Maid with her father: Selvena was getting married at the end of summer.
Catini bar Edinio, whose father owned a good-sized estate of olive trees and vineyards north of Astibar, and a modest but successful banking-house in the city, had asked Rovigo for his second daughter’s hand early in the spring. Rovigo, urgently forewarned by his second daughter, had given his consent, a decision calculated, among other things, to forestall Selvena’s oft-proclaimed intention to do away with herself should she still be living at home and unwed by the autumn. Catini was earnest and pleasant if a little dull, and Rovigo had done business with Edinio in the past and liked the man.
Selvena was tempestuously ecstatic, about plans for the wedding, about the prospect of running her own home—Edinio had offered to set the young couple up in a small house on a hill above his vineyards—and, as Rovigo overheard her telling the younger girls one evening, about the anticipated pleasures of the marriage-bed.
He was pleased for her happiness and rather looking forward to the celebration of the marriage. If he had moments of sadness that he strove to mask, he attributed it to the natural feelings of a man who saw that his girl-child had become a woman rather sooner than he had been prepared for. The sight of Selvena making a red glove for her bridal night affected Rovigo more than he had thought it would. He would turn from her bright, feverish chatter to Alais, neat and quiet and watchful, and something akin to sadness would touch his spirit amid the anticipatory bustle of the house.
Alix seemed to understand, perhaps even better than he did himself. His wife had taken to patting his shoulder at sporadic, unexpected moments, as if gentling a restive creature.
He was restive. This spring the news from the wider world was unpredictable and of seemingly enormous consequence. Barbadian troops were beginning to clog the roads as they moved up to northern Ferraut, on the border of Senzio. From the newly declared Kingdom of the Western Palm had come no clear response as yet to this provocation. Or none that had reached Astibar. Rovigo hadn’t heard a word from Alessan since well before the Ember Days, but he had been told a long time ago that this spring might mark the beginning of something new.