Of Hornwrack's history he had been reluctant to say anything save, 'A disaffected lordling from the midlands near Soubridge. After the war he seems to have wiped the clay off his boots and tried to drink himself to death in the Low City.'Nevertheless, when pressed, he admitted, 'Hornwrack was the youngest son. His brothers fell with the rest of Waterbeck's ploughboys in the Great Brown Waste. His mother and sisters were murdered later, when the Chemosit invested Soubridge. At the outset of the war he was an apprentice airboatman with the prospect of his own command; but he saw no service as such. Initially he was too young, later – with the destruction of its vessels – the whole Corps was dismantled. This he appears to regret more than the deaths of his family. After the defeat of the North he seems to have failed as a farmer, and the family estate was forfeit to the Crown when debts made it unworkable. Now he lives by his knife in the Artists'Quarter, retaining his title perhaps as an advertisement, more likely as an insult to the empire that bestowed it on his grandfather.
'At the last count he had killed more than eighty men, in High and Low Cities. A dozen are presently trying to kill him.'
I will at least understand his bitterness, she had thought.
Now she looked up from a sheet of music as he came in. His demeanour was a sham, or so it seemed to her: he affected the braced instep of the professional dancer; his long grey hair he wore gathered in a steel clasp, in imitation of those doomed airboat captains who had flown their final sorties over the Great Brown Waste at the height of the war; his cloak was the crude meal-coloured garment of the hired bravo, tailored for swagger, its hem dyed with sardonic vulgarity to the exact shade of dried blood. How could he mean anything to her, this ageing assassin with bones as raw ~ as a jeer? He filled the sitting room like a murder. His very
existence was too much for her delicate little coralline ornaments and collection of antique musical instruments; he overpowered them at once. It cannot be said that she saw through the Low City and the failed lordling, through the trappings to the man beneath: there was, after all, hardly any of him left to see.
Yet rather than simply walking through a door, he seemed to rush out at her from the past. His hair blew back in the wind of time! She saw him for a moment silhouetted against some vanished dawn – the tall thin body held with a helpless formality, the misery in the eyes, the great ruined metal bird hanging from his belt. Only a moment, but in it she mistook self-concern for dignity; wept for the dead poet tegeus-Cromis; and wondered briefly why this tired hooligan should remind her of winter hyacinths blooming in a tower by the sea.
It passed, of course.
Alstath Fulthor followed the assassin in. Beyond the threshold they regarded one another like wary 'dogs; then Hornwrack shrugged and smiled slightly, and Fulthor turned away, looking disgusted. She offered them refreshment. Fulthor refused, picked up a book bound in olive leather and stared angrily at it; while Hornwrack stood in front of her, swaying a little. He would not look at her. He smelt of death. Presently, Cellur and Tomb entered the room. Cellur took a little Mingulay wine, sighed – 'These lamps somehow recall my buried life -'and sat down in the shadows. The dwarf made her a pretentious intricate bow then leant against the wall, one leg bent to rub his calf.
'You feel your House was wronged by mine,'she began without preamble. 'We confiscated your estates. Our wars robbed you of your family.'
Hornwrack favoured her with a bitter smile.
'Houses?'he said. 'Madam, my family were farmers.'He fingered his jaw where, she saw, something had recently laid it open to the bone. 'Every airboat in the kingdom was destroyed so that you might keep your throne.'He stared over her head. 'It was my freedom you robbed me of.'
If she thought she could see the Queen's Flight burning to ashes in his eyes (drifting down into the desert like withered leaves, spilling smoke and queer lights and little silent figures), she was wrong. He had not even seen their last defeat – only stood, sixteen years old, on the phlegmatic earth and watch them fly like greyhounds into the North vessels, friends, captains all. None had ever returned, nor had he expected them to. The rest of the war he had passed in killing Northmen with a knife in the starving alleys of a.captured city; practising unknown to himself the skills of the only trade his imagination had left to him.
'Mornings,'he whispered feverishly, 'chafe me still. I wake, and look into the empty air, and wonder if throne and empire were worth it – the burning boys and crystal ships.'
He curled his lip and looked about him.
'I would not come here again for fear of finding it was not.
His hand went quickly under his cloak.
'Fulthor, do nothing!'he hissed. 'I'll kill you here, if I have to!'
He wiped the back of his hand across his lacerated cheeks. Outside in the corridor a cold draught spoke of a change in the wind; a new weather. Inside, Alstath Fulthor let his baan drop back into its sheath. The dwarf cocked his head like a starling. 'The old man looked on from the shadows. Hornwrack relaxed slowly.
'Madam,'he said, 'your next family quarrel will have to be fought on the ground.'
'Yet wrongs are not righted by hiding in the Low City,'Methvet Nian told him patiently.
He shrugged.
'Can you give me back the sky? If not, pay me for the service I did you last night and let me go. I believe the girl is worth something to you; and I bled for her. I do not hide in the Low City: I reject the High.'
She would not believe him. (How could sne?) Instead she offered him a myth of his own: a place among the hieratic furniture and exemplary figures of a long declining dream -In a rosewood chest with copper reinforcing bands she
kept three things: a gourd-shaped musical instrument from the East; a short coat of mail, lacquered black; anc. an unpretentious steel sword with a sweat-darkened leather grip. Now she bit her lip, and went over to the chest, and took from it the sword and mail. For a moment she stood uncertainly with them in the centre of the room, facing first the Reborn Man, who would not meet her eyes – then Tomb (the old dwarf glanced at Hornwrack and made a sudden half-amused movement of his head) and Cellur, who only stared impassively at her – and finally the assassin himself.
'Will these serve as payment?'she asked. 'They are all I have.'
Hornwrack looked surprised. He accepted the sword, hefted it; the mail coat he flexed with experienced fingers. He took a little rat's tail file from under his cloak and nicked them with it.
'They are steel,'he admitted, and shrugged. 'A fair price, though I'd have preferred it as an ingot.'He stared at her, puzzled now. 'If that is all, I'll go.'
'It is not all!'exclaimed Fulthor. 'Methvet Nian, the message!'He stood between Hornwrack and the door. The powered blade came out, evil sparks dripping from it in the gloom.
'Here's a High City trick if you like!'laughed Hornwrack, who hadn't a hope against it. He looked down at the old steel sword in his hand. 'Still-'
'Stop!'cried Methvet Nian. 'Alstath Fulthor, are you mad?'
His thin face white and sullen with confusion and rage, Fulthor let the baan fall to his side.
'Do not touch him. He has done us a service.'And to Hornwrack: 'My lord I see you are wounded. Visit the hospitallers before you leave here. '
Hornwrack nodded curtly. 'Don't come near the Low City after dark, Fulthor,'he said. At the door he paused, looked back. 'I would prefer to owe the House of Nian nothing,'he told the Queen. He threw the mail coat on the floor and dropped the sword carefully on top of it.