Just after midnight, Millie Harmon carried whiskey shots to a group of miners squashed around the table. One of them made a joke and she forced herself to laugh, though she did not find the young man particularly funny. He tried to engage her in conversation but she excused herself to get back to the kitchen. As she turned, she saw Gabriel O’Reilly, still in his suit, heading out the front door.
‘Gabe,’ she called, but he didn’t answer. Millie hustled to the door and pushed it open. The snow was coming down hard now; over a foot had fallen in the past three hours, and the gusting wind made the night time seem as though it had a nefarious purpose. Without thinking, she pulled her shawl more closely around her shoulders. O’Reilly was already halfway across the street.
‘Gabe,’ she called, louder this time, but again he ignored her. Light from the fireplace illuminated snowdrifts through the tavern windows. Millie could see that O’Reilly was wearing gloves, but had no coat or hat. ‘You ought to have a coat on, young man,’ she yelled after him. ‘I’ll not be playing nursemaid to one so ignorant as to be out walking out on a night like this.’
Gabriel O’Reilly didn’t acknowledge her as he disappeared into the darkness. Funny, Millie thought as she turned back into the smoky heat of the room, but O’Reilly’s pronounced limp appeared to have been cured.
RIVEREND PALACE
980 Twinmoons Ago
Tenner Wynne rested his eyes, leaning his head back against the velvet-lined padding of his desk chair. ‘Just a short rest,’ he promised the empty room. ‘I’ll get back to work in just a few moments.’ It was the middle of the night and he had just come from Prince Danmark’s royal apartment on the upper floor of the palace. A barge captain had found the prince wandering along the Estrad River two days after the Grayslip family summit last Twinmoon. Danmark had been struck blind and deaf and driven mad – by what or whom, no one knew. Tenner guessed it had happened on the same day Danmark’s father had been felled while addressing his guests in the palace dining hall. Markon’s death was believed to have been caused by a virus, although no one, not even the royal physician, had seen its like before. His son’s state of health was another matter entirely.
Danmark Grayslip – now Prince Danmark III – had been found stumbling along the river’s edge, babbling unintelligibly and waving at invisible demons. He was an unkempt, insane version of his former self, and Tenner could prescribe nothing to bring the young prince relief.
Princess Danae had not left her chambers since her husband’s funeral rites. There had been no royal ceremony, no gathering of the Ronan people to bid farewell to their visionary leader. With rumours of imminent war coursing through the Eastlands, Tenner felt a state funeral would be too obvious a target for terrorists hoping to capitalise on any perceived weakness in the royal family.
He had paid the barge captain well to remain silent about Danmark’s condition, but the new monarch’s failure to surface at any time over the last sixty days hadn’t helped. Danae did nothing but sit in her room, her hands folded in her lap, staring out of her window across the palace grounds towards the sea. She was eating barely enough to keep herself alive; at this rate she would soon fall into a coma. Tenner feared she had given up; she might even take her own life. He posted a guard outside her rooms, but Danae had forbidden anyone from entering.
The physician knew he could not remain in Rona much longer. Political stability in Falkan was weakening as well, and he, by default, was now Falkan’s prince. Helmat, his nephew, had been found dead with Anis Ferlasa, the Pragan heir, and it was pretty clear to those who found them that Anis had murdered her cousin after an incestuous sexual act and then fallen prey to the same virus that had claimed Markon earlier that evening. The discovery brought additional tension to the already shaky peace between Falkan and Praga. Helmat’s mother, Princess Anaria, had committed suicide three days after arriving back in Orindale. She had grieved when Harkan had been killed at sea, but the loss of Helmat as well was too great for Tenner’s sister to bear. Now Tenner was left with the Falkan crown, a charge he had never wanted.
He wept silently as he thought of Anaria. If he had gone home with her rather than staying at Riverend to attend to the crisis in Rona she might have found the resilience to hold on, maybe even to take up the reins of government again. Instead he had allowed her to ride north with her dead son in a coffin. She had been a good leader; better, she had been a wonderful mother to his nephews. Tenner realised he had never told her that.
How far had she travelled, alone in her royal coach, before deciding to end her life? Had she crossed the border? Had she seen the Blackstones one last time? Or perhaps she kept the carriage curtains closed for the entire trip. Tenner hoped Anaria had made her decision quickly; he could not bear to think that his sister had spent days contemplating her suicide, days when he could have been with her – when he should have been with her. He would never know.
Tenner had not returned to Falkan for Anaria’s funeral; his current responsibilities in Rona were far too pressing. He planned to leave within a few days. Then he would make peace with his sister and beg forgiveness from her departed spirit.
*
Some days after the tragic deaths of Princes Markon and Helmat and Princess Anis, Tenner had received word of a massacre at Sandcliff Palace in Gorsk. The details were sketchy, but it appeared there were few – if any – Larion Senators left alive. He had dispatched riders to gather more comprehensive information, but even the swiftest Ronan horsemen would take many days to reach Gorsk. The entire political structure of Praga and the Eastlands was in ruins. The descendants of King Remond I, rulers of four Eldani nations, had been killed off; all that remained of Eldarn’s royal family were the Whitwards: Prince Draven, his wife Mernam and their son Marek in Malakasia.
Mistrust was rampant. Border raids had been reported between Rona and Falkan, and several Pragan trade ships had been taken by Falkan battle cruisers on the Ravenian Sea. War was coming, and there were few leaders left to arbitrate in the pending conflict. These circumstances would have been unthinkable a Twinmoon ago; they were why he had elected to stay in Rona until tonight. He had to ensure the continuity of Danmark’s family line before the prince succumbed further to his madness.
Tenner needed a commoner so no one would expect her to be carrying Rona’s heir. A daughter of one of Rona’s wealthy families would never do; her pregnancy would arouse too much suspicion. But he’d been lucky: he had found Regona Carvic, a beautiful sepia-skinned serving girl from Rona’s South Coast. He had taken the time to tell her how very important her task was, that she would be the mother of the next Ronan prince, but though obviously intelligent, the young woman was still frightened. He could hardly blame her: there was no way he’d been able to conceal the prince’s condition. When he revealed the madness that made it impossible for Danmark III to choose his own wife, the girl began to cry, ‘Please, Doctor Tenner, please don’t make me do this.’
‘I can’t make you do it, dear,’ he had told her calmly, ‘but I need you to help me. We all need you to help us.’
‘Is he violent?’ she asked, still shaking.
‘No. There’s no danger. He’ll be very gentle,’ Tenner assured her, a little unconvinced himself. He repeated, quietly, ‘Regona, my dear, this is for the sake of Rona. We need you.’
Regona wiped the tears away and nodded her agreement; she couldn’t bring herself to speak.