Wain set her back to Aeglyss once more. Both Temegrin and Fiallic continued to stare at the silent na’kyrim and his inhuman companion. She wondered what they saw there. Did they, like her, feel Aeglyss’s presence as an almost physical weight bearing down on their senses?
“That’s another matter best discussed elsewhere,” was all she said.
“Now, then,” growled Temegrin. “Come.”
He stamped up into the keep, his feet punishing the steps for his foul mood. Fiallic followed. Wain glanced at Aeglyss, and was caught on the hook of his eyes. Not so much as a tremor disturbed the immobility of his lips, yet she knew what he wanted; what he required of her. She gave a single, sharp nod to summon him and Hothyn after her.
“I didn’t mean for these… these to join us,” protested the Eagle as he, Wain and Fiallic settled into chairs around a fine circular table. The walls were partly panelled with dark wood. It might have been one of Croesan’s private chambers once.
“You question their presence in my company,” Wain muttered. “You can see for yourself. Judge for yourself.” She could not keep a trace of irritation from her voice, though it was directed at herself as much as anyone. She should not have brought Aeglyss in here. It was the act of a fool, no better than jabbing a sleeping bear — or eagle — with a stick. Yet she had done it, and matters would fall out now as fate saw fit.
“I don’t need to judge anything. A woodwight and a halfbreed? They’ve no place in this room, and no place in the company of the faithful.”
“Oh, that’s an old song,” whispered Aeglyss. He was standing behind Wain. She half-turned, meaning to tell him to be silent, but somehow the words stuck in her throat.
“You know…” the na’kyrim cocked his head as he spoke, his interest plainly caught by the thought he meant to express, “everything I see, everyone I meet, it seems to me that I have seen it, met them, before. I do not understand it, but everything, and everyone, tastes… familiar.”
“I will not have our time wasted by some half-wight who-” Temegrin growled menacingly.
“You, for example,” Aeglyss interrupted him. “The Eagle. I know nothing of you, yet I know this: your heart does not burn with hunger for the remade world. You find this world, this life, more to your liking than one true to the creed should, perhaps.”
Wain could clearly see the storm of fury that rose within Temegrin. It blushed his cheeks, knotted his brow, bared his teeth. But before that storm broke, Aeglyss laughed.
“Do you deny it?” he demanded of the Eagle through his laughter, and the words were like corded whips that lashed from him to Temegrin and coiled about the warrior’s throat, his chest. The air quivered at the sound of them and Wain flinched despite herself. Even impassive Fiallic narrowed his eyes and winced.
Temegrin was straining, yearning to pull back from whatever it was that burned in the na’kyrim ’s grey eyes. But he was held. Beads of sweat were on his forehead. Wain could hear his teeth grinding together. Her skin was crawling, her mouth dry. She felt only the side eddies of whatever torrential flow Aeglyss had turned upon Temegrin, yet her head spun, her mind tumbled out of her grasp.
Then Aeglyss grunted and turned away, dropping his gaze to the floor.
“No, you do not,” he murmured.
Temegrin the Eagle slumped in his chair. His chest heaved — a few wild breaths — and then slowed. He regained his composure.
“What… what monstrosity is this you’ve brought into our midst, Wain?” he rasped.
“Wait,” said Fiallic. His tone admitted no possibility of dissent or disobedience. He was watching Aeglyss, though the na’kyrim had drifted away from the table now, and was examining some wooden panelling on the wall. “There will be no more talk, no more discussion of any kind, in this room until the halfbreed has removed himself. Or is removed. The wight, too.”
And there, Wain thought, is the true face of the Banner-captain of the Battle Inkall. There was more threat, more danger, in the Inkallim’s cold, level voice than Temegrin could ever imbue his bluster with.
Yet Aeglyss kept his back to them. It was if he had been struck deaf, or was some open-eyed sleepwalker. He laid his spidery fingers, with their long, clouded nails, on a dark, scratched panel, caressing it. Hothyn was staring at Wain. It was an empty gaze, without threat, without even comprehension as far as she could tell.
“Aeglyss,” Wain said, and he straightened and turned to her. He regarded her with raised, questioning eyebrows, like some willing servant awaiting instruction.
“Leave us,” she said. “Wait outside with my Shield.”
He nodded, and left the room without a word. Hothyn went too: a great, lithe hound at the heels of his master, Wain thought. Only then, as it slowed, did she realise how fast her heart had been beating. Only as she unfolded her hand in her lap did she realise she had made a fist of it. She began to rub and turn the ring on her index finger.
“You will have to explain the company you keep,” said Fiallic to her with an incongruous smile. “My ignorance of his kind is vast in its scale, but your halfbreed is… disturbing.”
“My Blood was short of allies in this undertaking” — she shot a pointed glance in Temegrin’s direction — “so we had to find them where we could. Through Aeglyss, we have bent the White Owls to the service of the Black Road. They have proved useful, and may do so again. Aeglyss has pledged hundreds of their spears to our cause. And you have seen for yourself that he has certain other talents. I cannot explain them, or him, but I am disinclined to set aside such possible advantage merely because you — any of us — find one man unsettling.”
“I understand. But I was told your brother had already disavowed this alliance. Something has changed, apparently. Or is this a decision you have made without him?”
“Never mind disavowing,” Temegrin snapped before Wain could reply. “He attacked me. I’ll see him dead for that. I want him…”
“I saw no attack,” Fiallic murmured.
“What?” the Eagle cried. “The man’s a… a mongrel. Unnatural! Not fit to serve the creed no matter what his uses. I will have — ”
“You will have the wisdom to leave to the Lore the determination of what, or who, is fit to serve the creed,” the Inkallim said flatly. “Theor sent Goedellin with us for just such purposes.”
Temegrin’s eyes narrowed, and Wain detected hatred in that fierce expression. The Eagle had been humiliated by Aeglyss. It left him with a blister of anger on his heart that might be dangerous. Anger, Wain had always been taught, was an emotion to be resisted. It could too easily become bitterness or resentment at fate’s inevitable course.
“Goedellin?” she asked, eager to tease out the threads of power and influence, and to avoid discussion of Aeglyss if she could.
“An Inner Servant of the Lore,” Fiallic said. “The First esteems him highly. He accompanied the Battle on our march, with a number of his colleagues.”
Wain nodded. Whether Temegrin — or his distant master, Ragnor oc Gyre — liked it or not, the Inkallim meant to be masters of this war, then. The Battle would lay claim to its muscles, the Lore to its heart.
“The Lore has no place in the conduct of wars,” Temegrin muttered, though his voice betrayed the fact that it was an old argument, already lost. “I carry the High Thane’s authority here.”
“You should spend more time amongst the host gathered outside this city,” said Fiallic. “If you did, you would know that we none of us carry the authority that matters here. All those people out there follow the commands of their hearts, of their faith, not those of any captain. This is a righteous war. That is the only authority the thousands acknowledge; the only command that drives them.”
Temegrin snorted in contempt. “You ravens, always spouting pieties. If there’s no authority to be claimed, your own actions are a mystery. You think I don’t know you’ve got your captains out there organising the commonfolk into companies? That you’ve been doing it ever since Tanwrye? Hundreds, isn’t it? One Inkallim to command each hundred?”