The light she called blazed around her like a rallied army.
Almspend put her left hand on the Queen’s right and gave her every scrap of potentia she could muster. With her own right, she raised her strongest shield and held it in opposition to the onrushing darkness.
It came like the fall of night – and whatever it was slammed into the workings of the two women and folded them, compacted them, collapsed some, evaded others-
But it did not overwhelm them. It was slowed, and the very slowing of its apparently implacable rush fuelled their resistance. They spoke no words and thought no thoughts, their wills locked together as only two friends of the heart could be locked, and the warm gold light of the Queen’s power rolled, earthy and fresh as sunlight on a summer’s day, into the darkness, where it was swallowed, but not without result.
The darkness pushed past Almspend’s strongest shield, and her right hand vanished in icy cold – and her will was not shattered. She stood her ground, and continued to work, deep in the labyrinths of her white marble palace.
The Queen sighed, and offered her embrace to the darkness.
And it fled.
The two women stood trembling with spirit and suppressed fear for a long set of heartbeats, fast or slow.
‘Oh, Blessed Virgin! Becca – your poor hand.’ said the Queen.
Almspend’s hand was dead white, and the place where the darkness had been turned – the borderline of their victory – was marked as if by sunburn.
Becca Almspend looked at her hand – and knew the name of the malevolence from the stone.
Ash.
Edmund had delivered three shipments of cast bronze tubes, and the odd bells. Apparently they were satisfactory, as he had been abundantly paid. He’d begun to do mint work with his master, and then, on a Thursday evening while he was at mass, thugs attacked the shop, killed two apprentices, and burned his shed. A gang of apprentices had driven them off, killing two.
One of the two was a Galle.
It was odd that out of all the sheds in the yard they might have burned, destroying his had the least effect – he’d made the little bronze gonnes and his apprentices were now working directly for the master in Shed One, setting up the dies to make the new coinage.
He found Master Pye in the yard, crouched over a dead apprentice, a boy only ten years old.
‘Damn Random for running off to the city when we need him here,’ he said. Edmund understood his words, but little of his sense.
And the next day, when a Hoek merchant – one of the richest men in the west, or so men said – came to their forge, all the apprentices rushed about like servants to bring wine and candied fruit. The man wore black head to toe, with gold buttons, gold eyelets, and a gold order of knighthood. He sat, still wearing his black hat, and leaned on the golden hilt of his sword in the master’s office. Edmund entered carrying wine, and Master Pye nodded and extended a hand to him. ‘Stay,’ he said.
The Hoek merchant bowed in his seat. ‘I am Ser Anton Van Der Coent. I have come to see if perhaps my alliance and yours might arrive at an accommodation.’ He smiled with assurance.
Master Pye looked frowsy and ill-tended next to the groomed perfection of the Hoek merchant prince. ‘I have no truck with politics, messire, and I have a shop to run and a great many commissions under way. And you may know that we had troubles yesterday – two apprentices killed.’ Master Pye leaned back, his watery eyes apparently unfocused.
‘Ah, I am very sorry to hear of such a thing. The law in Harndon is not what it once was,’ said Ser Anton. ‘Such incidents are an insult to the majesty of the realm, and a terrible pity.’
Master Pye’s watery eyes seemed to transform. Edmund had seen it in the near darkness of the forge, but never over a tray of sweetmeats. ‘Do you know something of them?’ he asked sharply.
‘I?’ asked Ser Anton. ‘Honestly, messire – I could be offended by such a suggestion. What would I have to do with such things?’
Edmund thought he sounded smug.
‘At any rate, Ser Anton, I have nothing to do with any combine.’ Master Pye nodded. ‘So I must wish you a good day.’
Ser Anton smiled. ‘Are you not the new master of the King’s mint?’ he asked.
Master Pye cocked his head to one side. ‘Ahhh,’ he said. ‘So that’s what this is about.’
‘I’m prepared to offer you an order for seventy full suits of your plate and four hundred helmets,’ Ser Anton said. He took a wax tablet – a beautiful thing, all figured in black enamel and gold – from his belt pouch and flipped it open. ‘I estimate that you would take a little over a year to fill the order even with an expanded shop. I have customers waiting for the order – so I’d pay a premium for immediate work.’ He nodded.
Master Pye scratched behind his ear. ‘You’re talking a hundred thousand florins,’ he said. ‘A fortune.’
Ser Anton smiled. ‘So I am,’ he said. He leaned forward. ‘I would even undertake to guarantee that there would be no further interruptions of your shop’s work.’
Master Pye was nodding along. ‘Of course, I’d have to give up the mint,’ he said.
Ser Anton nodded. ‘So we understand each other.’
Master Pye nodded again. ‘I understand you perfectly. Get out of my shop, before I kill you with my own hands.’
Despite being armed with a beautiful sword and facing a small, hunched-over man with watery eyes, the Hoek flinched. ‘You wouldn’t dare. I can buy you-’
Pye barked his curious laugh. ‘You just found ye can’t buy me. Now get out of my shop.’
The man shrugged. He rose elegantly, and walked to the door like a great black and gold cat. ‘In the end, you know, you’d have been better this way,’ he said. But something about his smoothness was broken, for Edmund. Now he appeared vulgar.
When he was gone, Pye turned to Edmund. ‘Stop all work,’ he said. ‘All the boys, girls, everyone in the yard. But listen, Edmund-’
Edmund stopped at the door.
‘If I die suddenly, you keep the mint going. Understand?’ Master Pye looked more than a little mad.
But Edmund nodded.
There were almost forty of them in the yard, with shop servants, house servants, apprentices and journeymen together.
Master Pye stood before them on a small crate. ‘Listen up,’ he said.
Then he was silent, and looked at them.
‘We’re in a war,’ he said. ‘It’s hard to explain our war, because it’s like a fight in the dark, and without a flash of lightning we don’t even know who we’re fighting. We’re fighting for our King – that much for certain – but we’re not defending land, or keeping our churches free of the infidel. It’s hard to explain exactly what we’re doing.’
He looked at them, his mild eyes more curious than inflamed.
‘This kingdom endured a mighty blow this spring, from the Wild,’ he said. ‘And now – unless we have a few successes – it looks as if we’ll lose the fur trade, and that’s a blow. And men are trying to forge the King’s currency – which is like robbing the King – and that’s a blow, too.’ He shrugged. ‘We’re going to make new coins for the King. It may not seem to you lads and lasses like some gallant last stand on a stricken field under a silken flag – but by Christ’s blood, my young ones, it is. If we fail here, and God send we do not, if we fail at this, the King takes another blow. And eventually it will all fall apart, and we’ll have nothing.’ He stood very straight. ‘When the world goes to shit the great do well enough in their fancy armour and their strong castles. It’s we who suffer. The men in the middle. In cities and towns, making things and trading things. What do we eat? How do we defend ourselves?’ He pursed his lips. ‘When I was your age, I was sometimes known to say, “Fuck the King.”’
That got a guilty titter from the apprentices.
‘Aye – for a bit I was even a Jack.’
Hush.
‘But the Jacks haven’t given us anything, and the King gives us law. So we’re in a fight. For law. The law that keeps us and the commons in the game. Not slaves. Not serfs. Now – in the next month, we’re going to be attacked. I’m guessing, but it’s going to be rough. Maids attacked when they go to buy milk. Boys beaten on their way to the Abbey for letters. Fire in the yard.’ He looked around. ‘We’ll have to work all day and stand guard, too.’ He paused. ‘I pay the highest wages in Harndon, and I’ll add some hard-lying money. Who’s in?’