‘You’re not nobody any more, Sticky Rikke.’ Isern opened her eyes very wide. ‘The legend grows.’
‘Legend.’ Rikke snorted. ‘I’m nothing and no one.’
‘Ah, but isn’t that how all the best legends begin? I’d hazard you’re better equipped to lead us to a brighter tomorrow than most.’
‘I’m no bloody leader.’
‘How could you be, shuffling along at the back whining about how useless y’are? Hold that torch higher.’
‘Sorry. You’ll have to find someone else to hold it soon. I’ve been called to a meeting at dawn.’ Rikke puffed herself up. ‘By Lady Governor Brock, in fact.’
‘Wants to use your womanly wiles to convince her son not to fight, does she?’
Rikke sagged back down. ‘If she’s counting on my womanly wiles, she must be bloody desperate.’
‘Oh, I reckon you’ve more wiles than you realise. Talked the boy into fighting in the first place, didn’t you?’ And Isern gave her this sidewise glance, like they were in on some cunning scheme together.
‘What?’
‘With your lions and wolves and circles of blood.’
‘That’s just what I saw, in the vision. You asked me what I saw!’
Isern paused in her work. ‘You can’t choose what you see. But you can choose what you say. Moment ago, you were talking about changing the world. Now you can’t even change one boy’s mind? Let’s face the facts, it’s not the biggest mind around.’ She tore the thread with her teeth and reached for the bandages. ‘I know you like to think you’re jolting about helpless in a runaway cart, carried off to who-knows-where with no say in the matter, but if you look down, you might see you’re holding the reins.’ She gave Rikke another one of those looks. ‘Might be it’s time to use ’em. Now hold that bloody torch up.’
The Young Lion never looked bad, but being angry suited him, and being battle-scratched suited him, and even being a touch sulky seemed to suit him. Overall, Rikke was having some trouble imagining a better-looking man.
The trouble is that duels to the death aren’t always won by the best-looking. If anything, history favours ugly champions. Maybe they spend the time training that the pretty ones spend preening in the mirror. Rikke kept that thought to herself, though, since everyone was rattled enough already. Leo had staked all their futures on a duel with one of the most dangerous men in the North, after all, and about the only person who didn’t reckon that the worst idea since swords made of cake was Leo himself, known widely for his poor judgement.
Rikke’s mood was by no means helped by the knight herald standing motionless in the middle of the tent, a letter from His August Majesty held out in one gauntleted fist. When she’d slipped through the flap and seen him standing there, she’d wondered where they found all these tall bastards. Then she’d wondered why everyone else was ignoring him. Then, during a particularly impassioned rant, the lady governor had walked right through him and back the other way, and Rikke had realised her left eye was hot and he wasn’t actually there. Or wasn’t there yet, maybe.
When she’d seen Black Calder coming, she’d started to reckon the Long Eye a blessing. Now it was looking like a curse all over again.
‘I can’t back out,’ Leo was saying, all sullen and scratched and beautiful. ‘What’ll I look like?’
His mother stared in disbelief. She’d been doing that a lot. ‘There are bigger things at stake than what you look like!’
Rikke’s father took a turn, easing himself between the two of them, putting a calming hand on Leo’s shoulder. ‘Look, son, it’s an irony of life that the older you get, and the less years there are ahead of you, the more you fear the loss of ’em. When you’re young, it can feel like you’re invincible, but …’ He snapped his fingers under Leo’s nose. ‘Fast as that, it can all be took away.’
‘I know that!’ said Leo. ‘It was your stories of the Bloody-Nine that made me fascinated by duels in the first place! All his great victories in the Circle. The fate of the North hanging on a single—’
Rikke’s father looked horrified. ‘Those were supposed to be warnings, boy, not encouragements!’
‘Has it occurred to either of you that I might bloody win?’ Leo angrily bunched one scabbed fist. ‘We’re fought out! We’ve no help coming and Scale Ironhand has fresh men ready! This might be our only chance to take back Uffrith. To keep the Protectorate alive!’
Rikke’s father folded his arms, and puffed up a slow sigh, and glanced at Leo’s mother from under his bushy brows. ‘Can’t deny he’s got a point.’
‘I can win!’ Leo came to stand right next to the frozen knight herald, the big seal on the scroll that wasn’t there almost touching his face. ‘I know I can! Rikke saw it!’
Rikke’s father and Leo’s mother turned together to look at her. She stood frozen, mouth and eyes wide open like a burglar caught with her hand in a purse.
And it came to her then that Isern had been right. What she’d seen was one thing but what she said another, and there needn’t be a straight road between the two, but any kind of maze she chose to put there. Sorry, Leo, I made a mistake. Sorry, Leo, your mother’s right. Sorry, Leo, actually the lion lost, and got his fruits ripped off and stuck on a pike.
Might be she was holding the reins after all. Might be she always had been. Might be she’d done this, and could undo it.
But somewhere at the back of her mind, in a dark corner she’d hardly known she had, she found she wanted to see Leo fight Stour Nightfall. To see him spill that evil bastard’s blood in front of the whole North. To take her share of vengeance, for her father, for those wounded in the glade, for the dead already in the mud, for the shit she’d gone through out in the cold woods.
She could’ve said anything. She chose to tell the truth.
‘I saw a lion and a wolf fight in a circle of blood, and the lion won.’
Leo’s mother pressed her fingers to her temples. ‘So you are going to risk your life, not to mention the future of the North, because this girl saw animals fighting while she had a fit?’
‘She saw the Nail come from the woods before it happened,’ said Rikke’s father, forced against his better judgement into defending her. ‘Weren’t for that, we might all be in the mud already.’
‘For pity’s sake, Rikke!’ shouted Finree. ‘You’re no fool! Tell him this is madness!’
‘Well …’ Rikke frowned at jingling footsteps outside, spurs on armoured boots, and she rolled her eyes up to the tent’s ceiling. ‘Ahhhhh. I get it.’
‘Get what?’
‘Hardly matters what I think. Or you.’
‘Might I ask why?’
Rikke nodded towards the tent flap. ‘Because of him.’
It was swept open with a swirling of cloth and the knight herald stomped into the tent. He pulled the scroll from his satchel and stepped forward, coming to stand just exactly where he’d been standing the whole time, scroll offered out to Leo, great seal dangling.
‘My Lord Brock,’ he said. ‘A message from the king.’
There was a breathless stillness in the tent as Leo took the scroll and slowly unrolled it. He read the first few lines and looked up, eyes wide.
‘The king confirms me in my father’s place as Lord Governor of Angland.’
Rikke’s father let go a long, slow breath. Leo’s mother took a half-step forwards.
‘Leo—’
‘No,’ he said. Not sharp, but very firm. ‘I know you want what’s best for me, Mother. I’m grateful for all you’ve taught me. But I have to stand on my own now. I’m fighting Stour Nightfall. Nothing anyone can say will change my mind.’