Thunderwyrm IV (2/2)

Fiara took to the corridors. She had to get to her father. He would be the one for first target. Though she knew her way around the keep, it was an ancient place, built and rebuilt many times, and the artisan work of every carved stone was mirrored where it could be. She traced the halls tirelessly as she might, for every step thumped with the beating of that drum, and for every few beats, those sleeping on the table wailed deafening pleas for mercy.

Then she saw the exactors of the gods’ price. A small troupe, of barely five, but certainly Hedet men. Their hands were stained with the weapons of bloodshed. Dirks and daggers and knives and even crossbows. From where they had come, the lights of fires and torches from rooms with open doors danced on the gloomy stone. Fiara feared it too late. Not even the finest warrior could parry an assassin’s blade when it fell upon their inebriated neck. And Brighthelm’s Stone was not even close to the finest warrior.

Who knew how many as them stalked the halls. Who knew when she would find them before her mother or father. Or even Maerk. And they wanted her to marry the instigator of, or at least a player in, this massacre. A massacre of goodwill; a violation of celebration and a war against hospitality. Macenurn’s pure sphere of warmth was the holy sin committed unto that bloody night.

And a hand fell upon her, just as the drumbeater came down. Fiara spun and bit her tongue to save noise. With a fist raised, in the fit of instinct’s calling, she slogged a punch at the owner of the hand. That owner eluded her fist, catching it in his own. His face was angular and firm, and without any of the pleasantries of earlier.

‘Lord Fury,’ she hushed. ‘I saw your note.’

‘Forget the note. We have to leave. Well thought, getting your priest to formulate an extraction,’ he said. His words were the cold steel of order at its utmost, forged in the heat and blood and iron of the unsavoury culture in Hille. ‘Now come.’

‘But my father–’

‘Your father is functionally dead. I haven’t time to dispute this, you’re the heir, and my sword is yours, but I cannot protect you if you insist on denying me.’

‘Insist? I barely–’

Jaedd Summerose’s face shot up to the ceiling. The horn sounded again, though this time it wailed deep and low, and was blown thrice. ‘If he isn’t dead already, he most certainly will be now,’ the Fury of the Stone said.

Fiara felt her face sting wet. Her mother, too. And all the fine women and men of Cliffhaven. Why? A baby cursed the silence for a few seconds, weeping more audibly than any noise Fiara had ever heard. A noise lasting only a few beats of that thumping drum.

‘There isn’t time to cry,’ Jaedd was adamant. He gave the swiftest wooden hug, as if obligatory, but even that gave a little comfort.

‘I’m not crying,’ Fiara said. ‘Why is this happening? What’s even going on?’

‘You already know the answer to that. You’re far too clever to ask. Now we go.’ Summerose was certainly persistent, if not persuasive. They began to pace the halls back the way he had come.

Not two-dozen thumps of the drum had bellowed before the horn sounded thrice as it had done. And then from a high window-arch that peered into the court hall, Fiara saw. Her father was carried arm-by-arm like a limbed sack by two men, and her mother closely behind. They were brought in front of a face she could not see but standing between two standard-bearers upholding banners of a house she knew too well. Though it had changed: the ordinary heraldry of Hedet, the grey fist made of stone, was replaced with one made of golden silk, and around its wrist was wrapped a silver crown. A hooded man was pushed forward. In his hands, a bardiche, bearing the longest head a poleaxe may. The steel on it was not fine, but crude, perhaps even ancient bronze: for it was rusted verdigris in the glint of the moons.

Jaedd stopped pulling at her shoulder. It seemed he did have time to pray for his Stone’s soul. The drummer was just beside the standard-bearers, a boy of barely adolescence, beating eagerly fast as the king was forced over the nearest table so that his head emerged over its edge. Jaedd timed it well, for Fiara had her eyes almost entirely covered when the axe came down. Her tears were stuck then. Something vile, something crueller than man should be able to be, had happened, and then her tears would not come. What kind of monster I am to not weep for my king’s head; let alone my own father’s…

‘Unless you want to see your dear mother’s head roll, we must leave,’ Summerose demanded. ‘You can pray for her spirit as you will whether you see it or not.’

‘I am your queen. You will give me this,’ Fiara demanded firmer.

‘As you wish, my Stone,’ the Fury of the Queen conceded.

Why she had wished to watch, she did not know, but Fiara had no regrets. As the bardiche swung, the wind finally decided to blow, whistling past the coarse edge of the metal. At least it was quick, Fiara knew.

The moments following fell into the shadows as they ran. Calls to find “the heir” and other vulgarities trailed behind them, but never did they meet the unfortunate gaze of assailants before finding Maerk, at the bottom of a ladder that descended into the servants’ depths.

‘You made it. You don’t understand how thankful I am to see you. To think,’ Maerk joked, trying to splay light upon the thick smog of inky darkness that swam through those dank halls, ‘they were trying to marry you to that man.’ Fiara had never been somewhere so dark. Yet she claimed to know Cliffhaven; it was as though an entire separate world was lost behind walls and in floors, and this was the world so many hundreds lived in when they were not present and serving their lords and ladies. ‘Thank you, Maerk.’ She lay one of her soft hands on his warm cheek, her slender fingers stretching to the circlet of hazel.

Edicus Whitewall had thoughts on the matter, ‘my wife died because of that… My wife died. I can’t believe this. She died. My wife,’ he wailed. The Whitewalls of the Roost needed no reason to fight for the Squalls. Such tragedy was rife, though, amongst the loyal people of Scarshire. It seemed only the Haebyrlings of Clyreton were missing. Their common feuding partners, the Lithundyres of Stormbasin, were eager to exact vengeance on that betrayal.

‘Had they married you to that boy sooner this may never have happened,’ Edicus mused out-loud.

‘A bold claim. Though I fear there’s a lace of truth to it,’ Jaedd thoughtfully said.

‘I don’t speak hollow words, Greenrose. Where were you when our Stone died? If the king’s own fury can’t crush his enemies, then what good is it? What is your purpose? Did you linger and lurk and let it happen? How can I know you didn’t trigger this all, or oversee it?’ His barrage of questions was far from a light in the darkness. ‘Your Reverence, are you content with him holding your life?’ Edicus asked, un-wanting or waiting for an answer. ‘I’m not.’ Fiara was queen now, but she could barely find her way to the torch that led the people.

‘I did what I do, Whitewall. I called Squall vassals to take arms. I was in the stables, about to ride to the city gates before I even knew what was happening.’ Jaedd was anything but the sure composure during mealtime. Though Fiara expected such; the Enforcers of Will were said to be unretributable should they let the Stone fall. And as if those demons were not enough, he had the venom of living Dukes to assure.

A man rushed forth, stumbled past the company of five-score or so, bumping past Fiara and into their sphere of dispute. ‘You dare touch Brighthelm’s Stone?’ Jaedd shouted. ‘Behind me, Fiara.’ He unsheathed a half-and-a-hander faster than anyone blinked.

‘Lord Fury,’ the man said in a huff. His accent was slow and sure, and every syllable was enunciated with fine precision. ‘Lord Fury, is my sister well? I haven’t seen her amongst us.’ Jaedd only lowered his blade. Its tip was pressing taut against the throbbing neck of panic.

‘I know this voice,’ Fiara interrupted from the back of Jaedd’s ruby-enamelled steel plate. ‘This is uncle Willaem. My mother’s brother, Duke of Nefae.’

‘Oh no. Not a Greener now. Of course he’s from Cesternshire. These southerners know no bounds of idiocy, I swear it,’ Edicus Whitewall groaned.

‘Niece,’ Willaem exclaimed as he reached around to embrace. ‘I’m so pleased for your safety. Those Hedets will rot for this… is your mother in good health? What of the Stone?’

‘You’re speaking to the Stone now, Duke of Nefae. I believe we’ve been introduced before, at the Stone Court; my apologies for raising Lodestar,’ Summerose said.

‘Lodestar?’ Whitewall quipped. ‘Lodestar? Is that the kind of pathetic practices you’re up to in those pampered Eggshells? I always thought that a man born of Scarshire is a man–’

‘A named sword is a loyal sword,’ Jaedd rebutted.

‘What nonsense. A named sword is a–’

Fiara interrupted their quarrel. Rather her inflexion interrupted the entire train; they knew their queen’s voice well already. ‘Stop your thoughtless argument. Uncle Willaem, regretfully… sadly… mother has been executed. Father too. The country–’

‘–is on the verge of civil war,’ Willaem finished. Fiara felt her heart skip. War is bad enough…

‘A bit of a jump. I truly am surrounded by the greenest of the magnate,’ Edicus said. The column ignored that comment, and all the rest that came after. For their road was hard and it was musty, though should they reach Brighthelm before Threid, or beat him back before then, at least some kind of conclusion would come.