He made his way to the kitchen where she had spent most of her time, the floor tiles liberally adorned with broken crockery, the table where she prepared the meagre meals they shared tipped over and lacking a leg.

“Protect me?” she had laughed when he explained his reason for coming here every night. Her eyes went to the short sword at his belt, twinkling a little. “I’m sorry, but that really doesn’t suit you.”

“No,” he admitted. “It never did. But, thanks to your brother, I do know how to use it.”

In truth, he always knew she needed little protection. Those few Faithful sufficiently deluded to imagine her some kind of substitute for her brother were sent away with implacable and waspish refusal, whilst the King never had reason to suspect her loyalty. She worked every day under Master Benril’s less-than-pleasant tutelage and spent her nights in this empty house, her charcoal and silverpoint crafting wonders from the parchment she starved herself to buy. It was parchment that bought her toleration, for he always had an ample supply and would bring some when he came, content to sit and watch as she worked, a bottle of Wolf’s Blood never far away despite her obvious disapproval.

“Every word she speaks regarding her brother and her father is to be recorded,” Malcius had told him that day he had been called to the palace, ostensibly to receive the queen’s endorsement of his latest collection of poems, but in reality to press him to a new duty. Malcius’s face had been grave as they walked together in the gardens, a king forced to reluctant necessity. “The identity of any and all visitors also. Lord Vaelin’s shadow was ever far too long, Alucius. Best if she’s not caught in it, don’t you think?”

He thought he was making me a spy, Alucius mused, glancing at the wall where she had pinned her sketches, bare now, save for the outline of parchment on whitewash. Little knowing the Meldeneans had got there first. Poor old Malcius, Janus would have known in an instant.

He climbed the creaking and partly missing stairs to the upper floor, Twenty-Seven following, hopping the gaps with nimble swiftness. He paused only a little at the door to Alornis’s room, as he had done at the end of many a drunken night, just to catch the soft whisper of her breath as she slept. Why did I never tell her? he wondered. Words spoken so easily to so many others, but I could never say them to her, the one time they would have been true.

The room where he had slept was mostly intact, his narrow bed still sitting against the wall complete with mattress, though the sheets were gone. He pulled it away from the wall and knelt, dislodging a fragment of plaster to reveal a small hiding place, missed by the Volarians who had come looting. He sighed in relief at finding the narrow leather bundle intact.

“Doesn’t seem much does it?” he said to Twenty-Seven, placing the bundle on the bed and undoing the ties, revealing a small dagger. The handle was undecorated whalebone and the sheath plain leather. He drew it, baring a well-made blade six inches long. “But,” he went on, “the man who gave it to me said the barest touch is enough to kill. Not instantly, but the poison on the blade will ensure a swift death.” He met the slave’s eyes, something he rarely did since there was nothing there to see. “What would you do if I tried to stab you with this? Kill me? I doubt it. Disarm me more likely, break my wrist perhaps. Or would you, I wonder, simply stand there and die, sure in the knowledge that I’ll find another just like you at my side before the day’s out?”

Twenty-Seven stared at him and said nothing.

“Don’t worry, my good friend.” Alucius returned the dagger to its sheath and pushed it into his belt. “It’s not for you. Besides, I find I’ve grown too fond of your company. Your conversation being such a delight.”

He pushed the bed against the wall and settled onto it, lying back with his hands behind his head. “How many battles have you seen? Ten, twenty, a hundred? I was in a battle once, well three times if you count the Bloody Hill and Marbellis, though my part was hardly worthy of note. No, my one true battle was in the Usurper’s Revolt, the High Keep. The first great victory in the illustrious career of our soon-to-be deliverer. There are songs about it, awful and dreadfully inaccurate, but I’m in them, most of them anyway. Alucius the poet-warrior, come to avenge his brother, ‘his sword like lightning from a righteous storm.’”

He fell silent for a moment, remembering. It was always the smell and the sound he recalled best, much more vivid in his mind than the images, which were just a red-tinged jumble. No, it was the sound of horses screaming, the stink of sweat, the odd crunch steel makes when it pierces flesh, voices begging their god for deliverance, and shit . . . the acrid, stinging perfume of his own shit.

“I made him teach me,” he told Twenty-Seven. “On the march. Every night we’d practice. I got better, good enough to fool myself I had some kind of chance, some hope of surviving what was coming. I knew I was wrong when Malcius ordered the charge. Knew in an instant I was no warrior, no avenging soul, just a scared boy with shit in his trews. I remember screaming, I suppose the others thought it a war cry, but it was just fear. When we charged the gate they sought to bar our entry with their bodies, linking arms, shouting prayers to their god. When we struck home the force of it sent me flying. I tried to get up but there were so many bodies pressing me down, I screamed and I begged but no one pulled me free, then something hard came down on my head.”

He remembered the kindly sister who had nursed him back to health, later destined to find herself in the Blackhold for heresy and treason, all because she spoke against the war. He remembered his father’s face the day he returned to the mansion, the sigh of relief followed by a curt order: “You will not venture again from this house without my consent.” He had nodded meekly, handed back Linden’s sword, and gone to his room where he had stayed for the best part of a year.

“I have always been a coward, you see,” he said. “And the more I learn of this world I find it the only sensible course in life, for the most part. At Marbellis I stood and watched a city burn, then watched my father hang a hundred men for burning it. I stayed at his side throughout the siege, even when he led a charge to seal a breach in the defences. Didn’t shit myself that time, though I was very drunk. When the walls fell I ran when he ran. Darnel was there, oddly enough, just as terrified as the rest of us. I remember he had to fight his own men to get to the ship that took us to safety, and when we sailed away I looked at his face and knew him to be every bit the coward I am.”

He turned to Twenty-Seven, beckoning him closer and speaking softly. “I need you to remember something.”

He spoke for a short time, the words unrehearsed but flowing well. When he was finished he ordered Twenty-Seven to repeat them, the slave doing so in a disconcertingly precise imitation of Alucius’s voice. Is my accent really that mannered? he wondered when the slave fell silent.

“Very good,” he said, then gave careful instruction regarding when and to whom his words were to be repeated. “I’ll sleep now,” he told Twenty-Seven. “Wake me by the eighth bell, if you would.”

• • •

He was gratified to find Darnel on horseback at the docks, his few remaining knights clustered about him on foot. The Fief Lord was ever keen to tower above those around him and insisted on riding whenever he ventured from the palace. A full battalion of Free Swords was lined up along the wharf behind Mirvek, waiting to greet whatever luminaries approached on the huge warship now cresting the horizon. Alucius knew from his father the Volarian supply convoys had been subject to frequent attack in recent weeks, the Meldeneans no doubt happy to find piracy as profitable an endeavour in war as in peace. However, a ship possessing the size and power of the monster sailing towards them could surely expect to remain immune from their attentions.

Alucius had spent the morning in expectation of some great commotion, men rushing to man his father’s carefully laid positions as Lyrna’s army appeared on the southern plain. But there had been no alarm, no warning trumpets to pierce the morning air and no armies to besmirch the surrounding country.

If she could have come, she would, he knew. If only to hang me. He had been keen to avoid her since the war, her scrutiny being ever so acute, their meetings limited to the occasional palace function. There had been times when she sent messengers requesting his attendance at luncheon but he had always demurred, fearing what her insight might tell her. I know what you did, Lyrna.

It had begun the day he returned from Marbellis and she came to the docks to greet the feeble remnants of her father’s once-great army. Her smile perfect; grave, encouraging, free of judgement or reproach. But he saw it, just for an instant as she watched a Realm Guard with a missing leg being carried from the ship. Guilt.

It had all tumbled into place later, an instantaneous realisation when he learned their new king was safely returned to the Realm and Vaelin taken by the Alpirans. He had been at the palace when Malcius, pale-eyed and gaunt beneath his beard, placed the crown upon his head and the assembled nobles bowed . . . and Lyrna’s face betrayed the same flicker of expression he had seen that day at the docks.

I know what you did.

He had always marvelled at how quickly the Meldeneans found him. Drink, women and the occasional flurry of poetry had been his chief distractions in the two years since Marbellis, liquor making him somewhat incautious with his words, words that some might take as sedition. The Meldenean had sat down next to him one night in his favourite wineshop, so favoured because the first cup was always free for veterans, a small expense since they were so few in number. The Meldenean wore the garb of a sailor, as befitted his nationality, speaking initially in coarse, uncultured tones. He bought wine for Alucius, professing himself ignorant of letters upon hearing his occupation, but asked many questions about the war. He came back the following night, buying less wine but asking more questions, and the night after that. With every meeting Alucius noted his accent was not so coarse as before, and his questions more searching, especially regarding the King and his sister.