One of his soldiers – Edward? Edmund? She couldn’t remember – drank off his wine and set his cup on the big trestle table with a click. ‘My lord, with respect, he’ll be a tough nut. The Outwallers are clearly terrified of him.’
The Earl crossed his legs. ‘That island. Can we flush him out and take it?’
Ghause shook her head. ‘I don’t recommend it. He’s taken a place of power. He’ll be very strong there.’
‘Why – is it well defended?’ her husband asked. ‘I never heard of a stone castle further north than this one.’
In some ways, he was quite brilliant. With the hermetical, it was as if he was wilfully blind. ‘He has much power, my lord,’ she said deferentially.
The Earl threw up his hands. ‘I’ve faced the Wild all my life, love! He’ll have beasts and boggles and some lightning, I have nae doubt. I’ll have a fleet and trebuchets.’
She tried again. ‘I think that he has the power to sink a fleet, my lord.’
‘When you call me my lord, I know you’re trying to hide something. Is he a friend? One of your special friends?’ The Earl grinned, and the officers all looked away.
Ghause rolled her eyes. She turned to one of the sergeants-at-arms who guarded the Great Hall.
‘There’s a woman in the dungeon. Bring her here.’ Ghause smiled.
The man saluted – looked to his lord for confirmation – and marched away.
‘Ten ships?’ Edward said. ‘At least. There’ll be ice on the lakes in a month.’
‘What about the report of Galles at Mont Reale, Ser Edmund?’ asked another man.
Edmund she tried to remember.
Ser Edmund shrugged. ‘I’d like to say it can’t be true,’ he said. ‘But I have three reports – and yon Imperial officer – saying there’s no Etruscan fleet this season. Instead, there are Galles. They have a powerful squadron and too damned many soldiers – that much all reports agree on.’
The Earl sat back and put a thumb behind his beard and pulled on it. ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Why here?’
Ser Edmund shook his head. ‘Above my pay grade,’ he jested.
‘Will they give aid to the Northern Huran?’ the Earl asked.
All the soldiers looked blank.
The Earl grunted. ‘Best we settle this Thorn quickly and get back here. If the Southerners and the Northern Huran fight – if that Morean was right – then we’re for it.’
Two guards appeared with the woman between them.
The Earl looked at her incuriously, and then at his wife.
‘She’s guilty,’ Ghause said.
The woman stiffened.
The Earl frowned. ‘You’re sure?’ he asked. He prided himself on his justice.
‘She killed Wren with hermetical workings.’ Ghause turned and smiled at the woman, who froze in terror.
She fell to her knees. ‘Your Grace – you don’t know what she did to me-’
Ghause nodded. ‘Get her a priest.’
The Earl motioned the woman away. ‘I’m busy. What’s this about?’
‘I want to show you what Thorn can do.’ The moths milled about. There were far too many of them. The officers murmured at the sight.
Father Pierre came. The woman wept, and the priest shrived her and heard her confession. He turned pale. Ghause waved a hand.
The priest gave her communion. He was far more afraid of his mistress than he was of his God.
Ghause walked over to the woman. She put a hand on her bent head, and then looked at the men at the high table, planning their infantile war.
‘Watch,’ she said. She raised a hand. ‘By my right to the High Justice of the North,’ she said. Just to have the formalities done.
‘Is this going to be a trick?’ her husband asked. But he took his feet off the table and leaned down to watch her.
She reached out and touched the other woman’s power.
And she devoured it.
The condemned woman turned to ash – all at once. And the ash held its shape for the time it took a silver moth to beat its wings once. And collapsed.
No one moved.
‘Thorn is more powerful than I will ever be,’ she said into the silence.
She only wished she could have been naked. She’d certainly said his name often enough to gain his attention. Inside her head, she was laughing.
The Earl stroked his beard and growled in his throat. ‘Not the fleet this winter then.’
Ser Edmund was slower to recover. ‘This is pure sorcery,’ he said. He rallied hiumself and took a deep breath. ‘This – sorcer is more powerful?’
‘He is far more puissant,’ Ghause said.
‘And yet Gavin says he was defeated by the King in springtime. Anything the King can do, I can do. Better.’ The Earl rose to his feet.
Ghause curtsied. ‘My lord Earl, I fear that the Thorn we face now as a dangerous neighbour is ten times the warlock that our sons faced in the spring.’ She didn’t add, he’s a mere pawn of something greater than himself.
The soldiers around the table looked at each other, but none of them looked at her except her husband. ‘Well, love, you’ve put the cat among the pigeons again. If it’s not a winter campaign on the lakes, my bones tell me we’ll face these Galles and their Huran allies in the spring.’ Muriens sat back. ‘My old tutor used to tell me that nature abhors a vacuum. And look – the lands north of the Inner Sea were a vacuum, and now they all come rushing in.’
Ser Edmund drank off his wine. ‘If it please Your Grace – we could do worse than to make an alliance with the Moreans. And we need to trade all the furs we have.’
The Earl was not a man to forget the value of money. ‘True, Ser Edmund. We’ll need every farthing to pay the garrison if we have a siege. Unpaid men serve too many masters.’ He strode to the edge of the platform and stirred the dead woman’s ashy remains with a toe. ‘Damn it, woman, you’ve cost me a good war.’
She laughed. ‘You can still do it. I’ll just have to plan on a cold bed for the balance of the winter.’
‘Meaning I’ll die, witch?’ He locked eyes with her.
‘Meaning just that, lover,’ she said. ‘And I’d rather not train up another husband. I’m an old woman.’
That night, she licked the nice salty place on the Earl’s neck and bit his ear and whispered, ‘He can watch us, even in this castle. The moths.’
He was no fool. Despite being deeply engaged in his favourite pastime – after war – he understood immediately. He didn’t pause his stroke, or fumble. But a moment later, he put both arms under her shoulder blades, lifted her a little, and breathed into her ear:
‘Son of a bitch.’
Mont Reale, One Hundred Sixty Leagues East of Ticondaga – Ser Hartmut Li Orguelleus, the Black Knight
Ser Hartmut stood at the stern rail of the command cabin of the Grace de Dieu, a cup of Veneti glass in his hand, drinking sweet Candian wine and looking at the fortifications and strong wooden houses of the Outwallers at the town he’d christened Mont Reale – the King’s mount.
‘We will land our soldiers and take this town as a secure base,’ he said.
Lucius remained silent with an effort.
De Marche shook his head vehemently. ‘My lord, we must not. That would alienate the very men and women whose favour we need. They are at war with their cousins to the south. We need to give them material aid.’
Ser Hartmut scratched his chin. ‘And get what in return?’
‘Control of the trade. A secure base-’ De Marche was ticking his points off, and Ser Hartmut laughed.
‘You two are trying to teach me how to make war.’ He laughed. ‘We can land and take the town and all the trade. And send it home to the King. At a fine price. There – I can think like a merchant!’
De Marche pursed his lips. ‘And next year?’
‘Next year we’ll be masters of Ticondaga and the whole of the river. We can take whatever we want and sell the rest into slavery. You, sir, are too modest, and you do not know the aims of our lord King, to which I am privy.’ He looked around. ‘You want a small profit that continues. I offer you an enormous profit, for a few years. Think of the slaves.’