Suth couldn’t help a rueful smile crooking up his lips as he said, ‘Yes, sir, thank you, sir.’
Goss grunted his approval. ‘There you go. Now you’re learning.’
The freak wave that rolled over the docks of Ring city had smashed boats in their moorings, demolished the wharves, and driven on to wash through the sea-front blocks. The worst of the damage was the countless souls it then washed out to sea as it retreated taking everything with it. Yet only a few days later the first boat dared approach Ring again. They found the great sea-chain fallen and submerged. Carefully, they oared their small fishing vessel onward, over the broad Hole itself, the first to do so since anyone cared to keep records.
Here the water was so clear, so calm, it was as if they floated hundreds of feet above nothing. Ernen, who owned the boat, squinted at the surrounding rock walls. ‘Where’s their keep, their quarters?’ he asked of the three dock-front youths who’d agreed to accompany him. ‘See anything?’
‘No.’
It had been old Ernen’s idea. ‘Them Stormguard were gone, weren’t they?’ he’d argued. ‘Probably run to Korel. So they must’ve left gear behind, yes? All that silver inlay. All them fine swords and armour an’ such. A rich haul just waiting for the first one to dare…’
And so they snuck out at night, made their way across and entered. Now he waved them to one side, pointing into the gloom. The youths peered at one another, terrified in the dim glow of their covered lantern.
One fumbled at his oar then let out a horrific scream, flinching from the side and making everyone jump. ‘Riders!’
‘Quiet!’ Ernen ordered, sitting still, listening. They all sat motionless as well, straining to hear. But only the murmur of the waves returned, echoing and hollow. Ernen cuffed the lad. ‘Ain’t no Riders here!’
‘Something’s down there,’ the lad whispered, hoarse.
Huffing, Ernen extended his neck to peer over. He stared, squinting, then his eyes widened and he let go an oath, making a sign of blessing. The lads joined him.
Below, unknowably far down in the black depths of the Hole, a figure glimmered. The unnatural clarity of the water allowed extraordinary detail. An armoured giant of a fellow in a full helm and holding, point-downward on his breast, a great grey blade.
Ernen knew him to lie impossibly far below, but it was as if he could just reach down and touch him.
‘Who, what, is it?’ one of the lads breathed.
‘A guardian,’ another said. ‘Must be a guardian ready should the Lady return!’
‘It’s just a body…’ Ernen began, but the youths ignored him, all talking excitedly about what a great warrior he must be, and so the old man waved the subject off and grabbed the oars.
‘Where are you going?’ one asked.
‘For the cliff. They must have a dock somewheres…’
The lads were horrified. ‘You can’t do that! You’ll disturb him!’
Ernen stared. ‘What? Disturb who?’
‘The Guardian!’
‘It’s a body! Sunk to the bottom of the Hole!’
The lads yanked the oars from his hands. ‘We’re not disturbing him. No one should come here at all.’
Ernen looked to the night sky. ‘Oh, for the love of all the damned foreign gods…’
‘Don’t be disrespectful,’ one of them warned, rather sniffily.
Ernen muttered something and sat back against the pointed bow, crossed his arms. Damned pious idiots! A month ago they would’ve turned him in for cussing the Lady, now they’re all against her. He shook his head. Damned youth — so certain of everything. Walk everyone off a cliff, they would!
At his bench on the High Court of the Newly Sovereign Kingdom of Rool, High Assessor Bakune listened to the advocate for the defence detailing the intricacies of the twisted bloodline governing the competing family claims to the Earlship of Homdo Province. He blinked his eyes to force them open wider, set his chin in his hands. He glanced out of a window where spring’s thinning cloud cover allowed a glimpse of clear blue sky.
He sighed.
Roolian troops of the Baron, now General, Karien’el caught up with the ex-Lord Mayor of Banith near the frontier of Mare. Along the side of the east trader road they found his great carriage abandoned, empty. Not much further down the mud track, in a gloomy inn, they found the man himself, hunched by the fire, his fine fur cloak grimed and torn of its silver chains of office.
The sergeant of the detail dragged over a chair, reversed it, and joined the man at his table. The ex-Lord Mayor didn’t even glance up from studying the flames in the cobble and mortar hearth.
The sergeant cleared his throat. ‘So… where is it all?’
Rousing himself, the man rubbed the stubble on his drawn cheeks, blinked his bloodshot eyes, and lifted the tankard before him, only to frown and peer down into it. ‘Innkeeper!’ he called. ‘Another!’
The sergeant yanked the tankard from his hand and slammed it down on to the table. ‘Where is it?’
Ex-Lord Mayer Estiel Gorlings blinked at the sergeant. ‘Where’s what?’
‘The entire contents of the Banith treasury, y’damned traitor!’
The man’s lower lip began to tremble. Tears started from his eyes. He wiped his face with a fisted knot of cloth. ‘It’s gone,’ he wailed. ‘Gone!’
The sergeant made a face. ‘Pull yourself together, man. What d’you mean, gone? You can’t have spent it already — have you?’
‘No!’ Estiel leaned forward, lowering his voice. ‘It was stolen. I was robbed!’
‘Robbed?’
‘Yes! He jumped out upon us in the forest-’
‘He? One man? You, with all your guards?’
‘Yes!’
The sergeant crossed his arms, eyed the man as if disappointed. ‘You’ll have to do better than that.’
The one-time Lord Mayor reached out a hand, beseeching. ‘Truly! He overcame the guards, picked up the chest and walked off into the woods
…’ His voice dwindled away into an awed silence as if even now he could not believe what he had seen.
The sergeant snorted his scorn. ‘No one man could overcome all your guards then walk off into the wilds with one of those huge chests — they’re made of iron!’
‘I’m telling you he did!’ Furious, Estiel attempted to push himself up, only to slump back into the chair, on the verge of weeping. ‘The guards took what was left and deserted me — the ungrateful bastards! Now here I am. Stranded. Penniless.’
‘Stranded no longer.’ The sergeant waved his men forward. Two grasped the thick furred shoulders of the cloak and heaved the man up. ‘We’ll find out where you buried all that coin. Don’t fool yourself.’
As the man was dragged off he raged at the sergeant. ‘No! I’m telling you! He stole the chest. He’s the thief! Not me! And he was a giant of a fellow. A giant!’
In the midst of a grassed slope beneath the gleaming snow-topped Iceback range, Ivanr stopped walking. Idly rubbing his chest, he turned to the mule train of followers tagging along behind — the last clinging remnants he could not shake off. They attended the two wagons of their blessed martyrs: the Priestess and Black Queen. ‘Here,’ he told the girl close behind.
‘Here?’ she repeated, uncertain, peering around. ‘But there’s nothing here!’
‘We’ll raise a modest building… a monastery, I guess, is what it’ll have to be.’
‘You would live here, so far from the capital? Please return with us, Deliverer. You must rule.’
Ivanr growled something deep in his throat. Weren’t they through with this? ‘No. Everyone should know their limitations. I’m no ruler. I’m just… a gardener.’
‘We will build the mightiest monastery in the world! Eclipsing even Banith!’
Ivanr waved his hands. ‘No! No… just a small building. With a garden.’
‘And training grounds for weapon practice,’ and she raised the staff she still carried.
Ivanr felt his shoulders falling but he fought against it and smiled his encouragement. ‘Well, think of it more as a kind of meditation…’