Meghren did not look thrilled by the notion, but waved his assent absently at the Mother’s words. He snatched up a large pewter goblet from his nightstand and gulped down the water greedily before belching.
Severan glanced between the two and frowned. He had hoped to get his own hands on the rebel prince, once he had been delivered to the palace alive. They had expected losses at Gwaren, but he had been quite embarrassed to report just how many chevaliers had been killed. Worse, they had lost three mages sent by the Circle in Val Cheveaux. Severan had been humiliated in front of his colleagues, and now neither they nor the Fereldan Circle were being cooperative. He would have twisted Maric’s spleen in his own fist, given the chance. Now he would have to be satisfied with another.
Slowly Severan bowed. “The rebellion will be destroyed at West Hill, and Maric will die. Quietly. It shall be as you say, Your Majesty.”
“And do not forget, good mage,” Meghren muttered between miserable sniffles, “you will not fail me again, yes?”
Severan walked out without comment. It seemed the King’s fever would prove resistant to a cure for several days longer than he had initially thought. Pity.
11
West Hill was a drafty, poorly maintained place. Sitting high in the rocky hills overlooking the Waking Sea, the stone fortress had once existed to watch the waters for signs of Marcher corsairs raiding the coast. The decline of the corsairs had brought a decline of the fortress along with it, and today the tall watchtowers stood mostly empty. The fortress was useful mainly for its position along the coastal roads bringing sparse traffic from Orlais.
Still, it felt forgotten. Soldiers were stationed here, with a handful of freeholders and servants to attend to them, but once the fortress had held many more. Thousands, whereas now it held hundreds. Many of the upper floors were closed off, as well as most of the underground chambers that weren’t still used for storage. Some doors hadn’t been opened in decades. It was very easy to make a wrong turn in West Hill and end up in a dark hallway full of crumbling furniture covered with drapes and layers of dust. There were many old ghosts here, or so it was said, and the locals spoke only in whispers as if fearful of stirring their wrath.
Katriel waited quietly in the shadows, listening to the wind whistling through the dark rafters overhead. She didn’t like this place. Too often business required one to pass through the lonely hallways where the only sounds were the echoing of your own footsteps.
It had been one week since she and the other rebel agents had arrived, sneaked in one by one to take their places among the servants. Katriel had been brought in with the washerwomen, a replacement for an older woman who had taken ill and been forced to move back to her home village. The guards hadn’t given her a second glance, and why would they? Katriel had been here before.
Prior to finding her way into the Prince’s company, she’d spent almost a year insinuating herself among the rebel sympathizers, slowly making herself indispensable to them. She had seduced a guardsman into introducing her to Arl Byron as a trusted contact, and that had been all she needed. The guardsman disappeared easily enough afterwards.
Now she had returned. After a week of quietly leaving notes in prearranged locations, she noticed that the other rebel agents had disappeared. So too had the sympathizers, those simple folk she had worked with for so many months. She quickly quashed the pang of regret she felt in their behalf.
She could take no chances. In the courts of the Empire, there were no innocents—there were only fools and those who took advantage of fools, as the saying went. Those who had any power were forced to play the same game as the rest of the aristocracy. Whether one was a bored provincial magistrate’s wife or a fashionable count living in a glorious manse in the capital city, one used others to get ahead. Others must be made to look worse so you looked better, gossip and intrigue being the weapons of choice to carve out your niche. It was a blood sport, and all who partook enjoyed it as such or quickly got left behind.
In all her years there, she had never met a player who did not deserve their fate. Smiles hid daggers and even the poorest servants connived to attach themselves to the fastest and strongest horse.
Yet this was not Orlais, was it? Here it was quite different. Here the people knew little more than hardship, but they looked each other in the eye. It had taken a long time for her to become used to that.
And then there was Maric. Katriel found herself smiling as she thought of her blond, grinning fool of a prince. He would not have lasted five minutes in the courts of Val Royeaux. If she had known it was going to be so simple to draw him into her confidence, she needn’t have tried so hard. How very earnest he was!
And yet how very much like his country he was, as well. Completely without artifice. She had kept expecting to find some vile secret hidden within him, some taint floating just beneath that gleaming surface, and yet there was nothing. She told herself it was that he lacked depth, but when he had looked into her eyes that first night, even she had found it difficult to maintain her composure. The Master who had trained her all those years as a bard would have been ashamed.
Still, it would be a shame to see the man dragged off to a dungeon. His smiles would vanish into those dark depths and never return, and that was because men like Meghren knew that the game existed everywhere—even here in Ferelden.
The wind howled in the rafters once more, and a pigeon was startled into sudden flight. Its flapping wings high overhead almost masked the distant sounds of footsteps on the stone.
Katriel turned and watched the hooded figure approach, fingering the dagger hidden inside her surcoat. A young lordling had once mocked the small blade when she drew it on him—he had stopped laughing when its razor-sharp edge had opened his throat before he’d a chance to lay another finger on her. She had little doubt that this was the mysterious contact she had been feeding information to since her arrival, but there was always reason to be cautious.
The hooded figure stopped a few feet away, bowing slightly from the waist as a sign of respect. She nodded to him but said nothing. His robes were filthy, and she couldn’t judge if they covered armor or not. He reached up and pulled back his hood, revealing a swarthy-skinned Rivaini face with sharp features, one Katriel had not seen among the fortress denizens. A hidden agent, then? Certainly there were many places to hide in West Hill.
“You are Katriel,” he stated, his accent clipped and foreign.
“And you are Severan’s man.”
He glowered at her. “You should not mention our benefactor’s name so casually, elf.”
“And you should remember who it is that has delivered this fortress to you.” She arched a curious brow. “I’m assuming that you’ve dealt with all my fellow agents by now?”
He nodded curtly. “We waited until last night, as per your instructions.”
“I wanted to wait until we received the last message from the army.” She reached into her surcoat and pulled out a rolled-up parchment. Though she held it out to the Rivaini, he did not move to take it. “They have been marching in small groups in the hills and will be in place by this morning. They will attack as soon as the gates are opened, as I promised.”
“They are opening now.” He smiled coldly. “There is a great force hiding beyond the western ridge, ready to strike. They will be crushed. Severan will be pleased, and sends word you shall be rewarded as he promised.”
“There is one problem.” She tapped the parchment thoughtfully against her forehead. “Prince Maric is not riding with the army. There is a camp to the south of West Hill where he will be staying during the battle, an arrangement he made to—”