Momentarily, Rix’s heart softened at the appeal, and against his better judgement he was considering relenting when Glynnie spoke.
“He’s rotten all the way through, and you’re no better. Get going.”
“You little bitch,” cried the shrew-faced woman. “I’m not taking orders from a half-grown scrag I could break over my knee.” She launched herself at Glynnie, hissing and spitting.
Glynnie sprang forwards but Rix thrust his sword between them. “Go, or your man joins Leatherhead — in two pieces.”
“Couldn’t care less if he does,” muttered the shrew-faced woman.
She gave Rix a hard glare, and Glynnie a look of fire and brimstone, then resumed belabouring her man about the shoulders, driving him down the road. But before they turned the corner she looked back, and Rix could have sworn he saw a grin of triumph. It troubled him, momentarily. Then they were gone and he put her out of mind.
Rix gestured with his sword towards the offal. Men ran to clean it up with shovels and buckets.
“You shouldn’t have stopped me,” said Glynnie quietly. “It’s bound to cause trouble now.”
“They won’t be back,” said Rix.
“Maybe not, but everyone in the fortress saw you interfere to protect me. Now they’ll think I’m a helpless girl put in a place I don’t belong. That the only authority I have comes from you — ”
“If they challenge my authority I’ll put them out the door.”
“They won’t challenge your authority, Rix. But they’ll undermine me at every turn, and — ”
“Let’s worry about that when it happens. I’ve got a million things to do and I haven’t even gone through the gates.”
Before they could pass inside a woman came hurtling out, howling like a mad thing. She wore an embroidered white blouse, a brightly patterned skirt, and despite the cold her arms and feet were bare.
Tall, she was, very tall, with a mass of chestnut hair, thick and wavy and wild, a full mouth, white teeth bared in a rictus of pain, and a proud, arching nose. She shot past Rix and Glynnie and threw herself onto the headless body of Arkyz Leatherhead, embracing it and smearing his blood all over herself.
She let out a howl of anguish, sprang up, looking around wildly, then plunged down the slope to the remains of the offal heap, where his head lay. The woman picked it up, kissed his bloody mouth then, cradling the dripping head against her bosom, lurched back to the body and fitted the head in place. Letting out another savage moan, she lay full length on the body, embracing it again, then rose and rent her garments, baring herself to the waist.
She stalked up to Rix, her full skirts swishing. She must have been thirty-five, and was by no means a beautiful woman, but even in her bloodstained fury, she was a majestic one.
“Who are you?” he said.
“I am Blathy.”
Rix knew her by reputation. “Leatherhead’s long-time mistress,” he said quietly to Glynnie, “and said to be just as bad.” Rix met Blathy’s eye. “What do you want?”
“You killed my man. I demand the blood-price.”
“Blood-price isn’t payable for self-defence.”
“My man was defending his hearth. His death is murder.”
“He took Garramide by force. I’m the legitimate heir — ”
“Garramide belonged to Arkyz by right of might.”
“He’s dead,” said Rix, “and the fortress is mine, by right and by might. Begone.” He raised the bloody sword.
She ignored the blade. Blathy was no coward. “I won’t go, and you can’t compel me.”
“I’ll carry you to the edge of the escarpment and dump you over if I have to,” said Rix.
“According to the founding charter of Garramide, the widow of the old lord must be given an apartment here for as long as she cares to stay. If the new lord does not make such provision, his lordship is void.”
“What a load of rubbish,” said Glynnie. “You made that up.”
Blathy looked down at Glynnie, who was a head shorter, then up again, dismissing her. “Ask Porfry.”
“And Porfry is?” said Rix.
“Keeper of the Records.”
Without taking another look at her dead man, nor pulling her blouse together over her naked chest, Blathy stormed in through the gate.
He looked down to see Glynnie scowling at him. “What have I done now?”
“You’re going to regret not casting her out,” said Glynnie.
“She’s just lost her man.”
“It doesn’t make her any less of a viper, and now you’ve given her the freedom of your house.”
“She’ll take another man within a fortnight, and once she does I’ll see her gone.”
“What if she doesn’t?”
“I don’t follow.”
“There are women who will only have one man, and if they lose him they never take another. I think Blathy is such a woman. You’ve got to get rid of her.”
“I took a vow to protect vulnerable women. I can’t cast her out in the middle of a war, in mid-winter.”
“She’s no more vulnerable than you are,” Glynnie said furiously. “And… and you’d better watch out. She’ll be after you next.”
“You just said she’d never take another man. You’re rambling, Glynnie.”
“And you’re stupid. You can’t see what’s in front of your own face.”
Rix’s wrist gave an agonising throb. He looked up at the brooding sky, and the fortress he must make his own against all opposition, then prepare it for an enemy attack that was bound to come before he was ready. Suddenly he felt exhausted, and unaccountably irritable.
“What makes you, a girl of seventeen who’s lived all her life in one great house, so wise about the ways of the world?”
It was a stupid thing to say, for all kinds of reasons. The great houses were miniatures of the world, with all its lessons in close-up.
She sprang away as though he’d slapped her, rubbing her cheeks with her hands. “I’ll never be anything but a maidservant to you. Someone to be dumped on the first doorstep, and never to be taken seriously. Never to be treated like a woman.”
“Can we talk about this later?” said Rix. “I’m — ”
“Don’t bother, Lord Deadhand.”
CHAPTER 24
Swelt, the castellan of Garramide for the past thirty years, was five feet high and four feet wide, and had the appearance of as greedy a man as ever lived. From the middle of his triple chins bulged a goitre the size of a melon, his fingers were so fat that he could not bend them around his spoon, and his eyes were little black dots swimming in seas of lard.
But appearances were deceptive. Rix’s great-aunt, a clever and perceptive woman, had trusted Swelt implicitly and by letter had recommended him to Rix before her death.
Swelt was also the most well organised man Rix had yet encountered. Swelt had every detail of the fortress, its staff and its resources at his fingertips.
“You want a healer for that?” said Swelt, frowning at Rix’s dead hand and shaking his head.
“Surely Garramide has a healer,” said Rix.
“We have three — Oosta and her two assistants. And some of the men can poultice an infected wound, or saw off a smashed limb at need. But there’s no one here who can help you with a mage-grown member.”
“Does no one in Garramide know magery? No one at all?”
“I dabble. And Blathy can work a fine curse when she needs to — only against her enemies, though, and those who have injured her…” Swelt gave Rix an assessing glance. “But as for healing magery… well, there’s only the witch-woman, Astatin, though I wouldn’t trust a healthy member with her, much less an ailing one.” Swelt’s gaze skidded off Rix’s grey hand. “You’d need to go to Rebroff or Swire for that.”
“How far are they from here?” said Rix, whose knowledge of the geography of the area was patchy.
“In dry weather, on a fast horse, you can reach Swire, in Lakeland, in three hard days’ riding, and Rebroff a few hours longer. But in winter, with rain and snow — ” Swelt inflated his quivering cheeks, “- you might not do it in a week.”