Morg shook his head from side to side. “Meeting even a scattered army on the battlefield means many casualties. Is it not better to let them come to us, where we have strong walls to aid us?”
“You assume they will attack if we do nothing. If it were wise for us to sit and wait, why would it be folly for them? They will not wish to fight in winter either. Let us use that to force them into a decisive battle.”
Morg looked up at the sky, as if trying to gauge when the first snow would fall. “You. Chieftess. You speak for one half of all my clans. What do you say?”
Morgain could not speak for a long while, as her skull-painted face contorted in rage. Clearly Morget’s gambit was working and he had robbed her of her glory. “My clans desire to hear the word of their Great Chieftain before they make a decision.” Morgain turned and stared into Morget’s eyes. “For myself, I desire many things. But of course, what I want does not matter.”
Morg nodded. “Very good. You’ve heard my decision. Take it to your chieftains, argue it all night over mead and contests of strength. Tell me tomorrow what you decide, and that will be our answer.”
There. It was out in the open. Morgain did want something. His own heart’s blood, probably. It did not matter, though.
If she refused to march west now, she would look the weakling. She would be begging the scolds to call her Morget’s cowardly sister. He knew Morgain could never live that down. She would offer her clans to accompany his because she had no choice. All the clans would agree that the war must be taken to the west, as far as Ness and the mountains beyond, all the way to the far sea, until all of Skrae was under their heel. As for Morg, he would never gainsay the clans when they were unanimous in their choosing.
And even if he tried to do just that-well, he could be replaced. And with Morgain on the defensive, able only to react to his own moves, there could be only one warrior ready and capable of being Morg’s replacement.
Morget walked away from the palace of justice with a vast smile deforming his face, despite how he’d been slighted by the Great Chieftain. No one dared ask him what he found so pleasant. He returned to the wall between the inner and outer baileys and collected Balint once more. As he headed toward his tent he told her all that had been said between father, brother, and sister. He wanted to know if she thought his plan to invade the West was brilliant or headstrong.
“Does it truly matter? It means more blood, and that’s what you’re really after,” the dwarf said, her jeering tone gone for once. She sounded afraid. “It means you get to kill more men of Skrae.”
As usual, when she wasn’t trying to be funny, she made Morget laugh the hardest.
“Oh yes,” he agreed, “that’s certainly a benefit.” He boomed out with laughter that shook the windows in the houses all around him.
Chapter Seventy-One
“The Godstone is cracked. The cracks need to be repaired. Only blood will do. Blood is what He wants! How can you not see this?” The madman, the child-killer, was chained to the bars of his cell in the gaol. He looked badly used. Bruises covered his chest and one eye was swollen shut. Clearly his keepers had been beating him.
Malden wondered if they had done so in self-defense or because they hated his crime. He supposed he couldn’t blame them for being angry. Still, he sighed. “I want him made as comfortable as possible. He’s beyond rationality-beyond knowing right from wrong. There’s no reason he should suffer because he’s lost his wits.”
“You could end his sufferin’ right now,” Velmont said. The Helstrovian thief didn’t look angry. He looked like he pitied the man. Yet it seemed he could imagine no better way to express that pity than slitting the madman’s throat.
The laws of Skrae-and the customs of Ness-agreed. If anyone but Malden had been in charge of his fate, the man would already be dead. But there had to be a better way-didn’t there? Mercy had to mean something.
“No,” Malden insisted. “There will be no executions while I’m Lord Mayor. The Burgrave hanged beggars for stealing a loaf of bread. Things are going to be different now.”
“There’s only six cells in this gaol,” Velmont pointed out. “There’ll be more like him, an’ soon enow.”
“Then we’ll build more cells,” Malden said, and headed up the stairs toward the ruins of Castle Hill. Velmont was right, of course. The gaol wasn’t going to serve his purposes for long. It was meant only for holding criminals until they could be brought to trial. It had not been designed for keeping anyone more than week at a time. The sanitary facilities were rudimentary. There was no air or light down there. Prisoners would sicken and perish if they were locked away in that hole for long.
Yet he knew he was right. Killing a man for a simple crime didn’t redress the original offense. It wouldn’t bring back the madman’s child. There had to be a better way, and it was up to him to find it.
Maybe, he thought for the first time, he’d been given this unwanted responsibility for a reason. Maybe he could use his power, instead of being used by it. Maybe he could change things for the better.
If he was only to be given a chance.
Up in the air again, he turned to Velmont and asked, “How much grain did we save from the stores?”
Velmont shrugged. “Enow fer a month, if we’re lucky.”
“We may have to ration it to last longer,” Malden said. He knew that would not be popular. In the two weeks he’d been Lord Mayor, the daily complaints he received about people unable to get flour to make bread had tripled. It was bound to get worse. Hungry people would want to know why he wasn’t feeding them. Starving people would start to think maybe they’d be better off with someone else. Every time he tried to explain the situation, he was met with blank stares.
The worst part was, he couldn’t blame the people of Ness. He couldn’t get angry with them when they didn’t understand. Back when he’d just been Malden the Thief, he would have had the same reaction. Living in a city, so far from farms and fields, people forgot that food had to be grown and harvested and brought to Ness and stored. When you could just go down to the market and buy a loaf of bread you never had to think about its provenance.
“Perhaps we should form details of men to go outside the walls and search the closer farms. There may be stores of grain left behind when the farmers fled. Though I imagine the Burgrave probably raided them. He’ll need to feed his army, and-”
Malden stopped because he’d heard a noise coming from beyond the wall of Castle Hill. A great jeering roar, full of boos and hisses.
“That can’t be good,” he said. They rushed to the broken gates and hurried out into Market Square. A crowd had gathered before the Cornmarket Bridge, a rough mob of women and old men who were throwing garbage at a train of wagons. Malden’s first thought was relief that the subject of the crowd’s ire was not himself.
His second thought was that it was his job to find out what was going on-and to stop it.
“We need to get through there and see what’s happening,” he said.
“On’t,” Velmont said, and started grabbing people from the crowd and thrusting them out of the way. Cursing and kicking, he forced a path through the gathering and Malden swept through until he stood at the end of the bridge, where rotten vegetables and bits of refuse coated the cobblestones, the remains of garbage thrown by the crowd.
A dozen men and women huddled there, sheltering themselves from the stinking missiles. They were dressed in heavy mantles and scarves as if they intended to travel a great distance. Behind them mules pulled three wagons overloaded with bundles and crates.