Mordyn had taken care to send the Craftmaster away content that the earrings had bought a worthy audience. Gann would never be Thane—and perhaps Lammain already knew that—but he might have to be found some elevated position that would allow the Goldsmiths to benefit from their investment. At least until the Chancellor could determine exactly how deep their claws were sunk into the Dargannan-Haig Blood.
Gryvan and his wife Abeh were magnificent, seated side by side upon the dais. His crimson cloak outshone anything else in the vast hall and made itself the object of every gaze. Abeh, as ever, had neither the sense nor the inclination to hide the delight all this ceremony and opulence kindled in her. Mordyn was always assailed by the image of a sow rolling ecstatically in mud when he saw the High Thane’s wife in such a setting.
Aertan oc Taral-Haig was close to the dais, surrounded by an attentive crowd of his followers. The Thane of Taral spent almost as much time in Vaymouth as he did in his own city of Drandar . He had passed most of the summer ensconced in a wing of the Moon Palace, awaiting Gryvan’s return from the campaign. Not for Aertan the discomforts of a hot summer in the dry heart of Taral-Haig, where the petty lordlings who infested his lands could trouble him with their interminable disputes, when the luxuries of Vaymouth beckoned. There’s one we needn’t worry about at least, thought Mordyn. Aertan’s loyalty would never need to be questioned so long as it brought him comfort and wealth. Behind him, skulking at the rear of the crowd as if he longed to be somewhere else, was Roaric nan Kilkry-Haig. Even at this distance Mordyn, experienced as he was at reading a man’s emotions, could detect the hatred that lurked in the young man’s eyes. It was an impotent hatred, so long as Lheanor his father remained bound by his pledge of allegiance to Gryvan, and Mordyn gave it little thought.
A more problematic figure stood close to the Taral Thane: Alem T’anarch, the ambassador of the Dornach Kingship. With his pale hair tied back from his face, and an ostentatious diamond clasp at the collar of his black cape, the ambassador was an exotic, faintly unsettling presence. Since his return, Gryvan had refused to even meet with T’anarch, despite insistent requests; uncowed, the ambassador had submitted a demand for reparations to be paid to the families of the two hundred or more Dornach hire-swords Gryvan had captured and executed during the campaign. It was an outrageous claim, and the whole dispute smelled to Mordyn like the kind of game-playing that could easily get out of hand. War with the Kingship was inevitable, if the Haig dominion was to continue spreading into the rich lands of the south, but the time was not yet right for that struggle to begin.
The gift from the Goldsmiths was the last. Horns were blown, their notes bounding back and forth in the stone-clad hall like silver in the air. The audience began to flow towards the doors, a slow river of glorious indulgence and self-satisfaction.
When Mordyn went to speak with him in the evening, Gryvan was in a fine mood. Mordyn could smell sweet wine upon his breath. The High Thane had been drinking with his sons while they trained hunting eagles in one of the long, high terrace gardens on the palace’s flank. Mordyn had little time for either the Bloodheir Aewult or his younger brother Stravan. Neither matched their father’s singleminded hunger for power, and that, as far as the Chancellor was concerned, made them poor inheritors of Gryvan’s mantle. Or of his own service. But the Thane of Thanes loved them well, so Mordyn kept his thoughts to himself. There was time yet; one or other of them might some day become what was needed to keep the slow avalanche of Haig supremacy moving.
The brothers had departed to seek livelier entertainments elsewhere by the time Mordyn came walking softly across the grass to join Gryvan. The High Thane was at the edge of the terrace, staring out over his city. A group of huntsmen stood at a respectful distance, the great brown eagles massive upon their arms. Gryvan’s shieldman Kale was with them. Both he and the birds watched the newcomer as he took up position at Gryvan’s side. Mordyn had been in the service of this man for so long that he could read all but the subtlest of his moods without a word being exchanged, and Gryvan had few moods that would merit the description subtle. Now, the Chancellor could sense that his lord was in an exalted state.
Beneath them, thousands of houses were crammed together, making warrens of narrow streets from which there rose the murmuring of countless lives being lived. Here and there, scattered between the Moon Palace and the distant horizon of the city wall, greater buildings rose above the rooftops like islands in a dark, tumultuous sea. In the distance Mordyn could see his own Palace of Red Stone, its porphyry glowing dimly in the last of the sun, and he thought of Tara waiting somewhere in its deep embrace for him to return to her. There were other grand houses too: the Palace of the Bloodheir, where Aewult hosted revels of a kind Mordyn preferred not to attend; the marble-faced White Palace, where Abeh took her household whenever the High Thane was long out of the city; the Crafthouse of the Gemsmiths, to which a tower taller than anything in Vaymouth save the Moon Palace itself had only this last summer been added. That edifice caught Mordyn’s attention for a moment longer than the rest. It was an uncomfortable reminder of his earlier musings on the rise of the Crafts. He did not allow the thought to distract him. He had other concerns to share with his Thane this evening.
‘It is a sight, is it not, Mordyn?’ Gryvan breathed.
‘It is,’ the Chancellor said softly.
‘When I was a child there were fields wide enough to race horses across within Vaymouth’s walls. Orchards enough to give every child an apple a day through the season. All gone now; all become houses and workshops and markets.’
There was no nostalgia in Gryvan’s tone. It was with something close to wonder that he spoke.
‘We have sucked the world to us, you and I,’ he said. ‘Built a place that draws life to it. Was Dun Aygll ever quite such a sight, do you think?’
‘No,’ said Mordyn, carefully colouring his voice with reflection and thoughtfulness, ‘not such as this.’
‘They fell because they grew still, the Aygll Kings. They made nothing new for too long. They forgot to cow their warlords with ever greater glories.’
Hardly an accurate assessment of the Aygll dynasty’s collapse, Mordyn thought. They fell because their strength was spent on the battlefields of the War of the Tainted; because the mines in Far Dyne were exhausted, and because the last King of their line who was worthy of the name was turned into a puppet on a string by the na’kyrim Orlane. Still, the High Thane could be allowed his drink-fuelled fantasies. Even when drunk he usually heeded counsel wiser than that offered by wine.
‘The great must never be still if they are to prosper,’ Gryvan was saying. ‘They must always be moving onwards. The south calls to me. Ah, it’s a tempting call. Next year, or the year after, before I am too old for the testing, we must measure ourselves against the Dornach Kingship. If we could humble that nest of thieves and whoresoldiers, what a legacy to leave my son, eh?’
Mordyn could not help but think the High Thane underestimated the toll the passing years were taking upon him. The man was not recovering as quickly from the recent campaign as he once would have done. His face still had a pinched look to it, and there was a tiredness in the skin beneath his eyes that had not been there before he rode out to make war on Igryn oc Dargannan-Haig. A campaign against Dornach would be an altogether more demanding endeavour.
‘Indeed,’ the Shadowhand said, ‘though Dargannan must first be secured for such an undertaking to succeed.’