‘I realise it must have been a wrench to abandon Ollensand, but we need you here.’
‘So I see,’ said Meed, with characteristic bad grace. ‘I understand there was a serious—’
‘Gentlemen!’ The press of officers near the door parted to let someone through. ‘I must apologise for my late arrival, the roads are quite clogged.’ A stocky bald man emerged from the crowd, flapping the lapels of a travel-stained coat and heedlessly spraying water over everyone around him. He was attended by only one servant, a curly-haired fellow with a basket in one hand, but Finree had made it her business to know every person in his Majesty’s government, every member of the Open Council and the Closed and the exact degrees of their influence, and the lack of pomp did not fool her for a moment. Put simply, whether he was said to be retired or not, Bayaz, the First of the Magi, outranked everyone.
‘Lord Bayaz.’ Finree’s father made the introductions. ‘This is Lord Governor Meed, of Angland, commanding his Majesty’s third division.’
The First of the Magi somehow managed to press his hand and ignore him simultaneously. ‘I knew your brother. A good man, much missed.’ Meed attempted to speak but Bayaz was distracted by his servant, who at that moment produced a cup from his basket. ‘Ah! Tea! Nothing seems quite so terrible once there is a cup of tea in your hand, eh? Would anyone else care for some?’ There were no takers. Tea was generally considered an unpatriotic Gurkish fashion, synonymous with moustache-twiddling treachery. ‘Nobody?’
‘I would love a cup.’ Finree slipped smoothly in front of the lord governor, obliging him to take a spluttering step back. ‘The perfect thing in this weather.’ She despised tea, but would happily have drunk an ocean of it for the chance to exchange words with one of the most powerful men in the Union.
Bayaz’ eyes flickered briefly over her face like a pawnshop owner’s asked for an estimate on some gaudy heirloom. Finree’s father cleared his throat, somewhat reluctantly. ‘This is my daughter—’
‘Finree dan Brock, of course. My congratulations on your marriage.’
She smothered her surprise. ‘You are very well informed, Lord Bayaz. I would have thought myself beneath notice.’ She ignored a cough of agreement from Meed’s direction.
‘Nothing can be beneath the notice of a careful man,’ said the Magus. ‘Knowledge is the root of power, after all. Your husband must be a fine fellow indeed to outshine the shadow of his family’s treason.’
‘He is,’ she said, unabashed. ‘He in no way takes after his father.’
‘Good.’ Bayaz still smiled, but his eyes were hard as flints. ‘I would hate to bring you pain by seeing him hanged.’
An awkward silence. She glanced at Colonel Brint, then at Lord Governor Meed, wondering if either of them might offer some support for Hal in reward for his unstinting loyalty. Brint at least had the decency to look guilty. Meed looked positively delighted. ‘You will find no more loyal man in his Majesty’s whole army,’ she managed to grate out.
‘I am all delight. Loyalty is a fine thing in an army. Victory is another.’ Bayaz frowned about at the assembled officers. ‘Not the best of days, gentlemen. A long way from the best of days.’
‘General Jalenhorm overreached himself,’ said Mitterick, out of turn and with little empathy, behaviour entirely characteristic of the man. ‘He should never have been so damn spread out—’
‘General Jalenhorm acted under my orders,’ snapped Marshal Kroy, leaving Mitterick to subside into a grumpy silence. ‘We overreached, yes, and the Northmen surprised us …’
Your tea.’ A cup was insinuated into Finree’s hand and the eyes of Bayaz’ servant met hers. Odd-coloured eyes, one blue, one green. ‘I am sure your husband is as loyal, honest and hard-working as ever a man could be,’ he murmured, a most unservile curl to the corner of his mouth, as if they shared some private joke. She did not see what, but the man had already oozed back, pot in hand, to charge Bayaz’ cup. Finree wrinkled her lip, checked she was unobserved and furtively tossed the contents of hers down the wall.
‘…our choices were most limited,’ her father was saying, ‘given the great need for haste impressed upon us by the Closed Council—’
Bayaz cut him off. ‘The need for haste is a fact of our situation, Marshal Kroy, a fact no less compelling for being a political imperative rather than a physical.’ He slurped tea through pursed lips, but the room was held so silent for the duration one could have heard a flea jump. Finree wished she understood the trick, and could rely on her every facile utterance being given rapt attention, rather than endlessly chewing on her usual diet of sidelinings, humourings and brushings-off. ‘If a mason builds a wall upon a slope and it collapses, he can hardly complain that it would have stood a thousand years if only he had been given level ground to work with.’ Bayaz slurped again, again in utter silence. ‘In war, the ground is never level.’
Finree felt an almost physical pressure to jump to her father’s defence, as if there was a wasp down her back that had to be smashed, but she bit her tongue. Taunting Meed was one thing. Taunting the First of the Magi quite another.
‘It was not my intention to offer excuses,’ said her father stiffly. ‘For the failure I take all the responsibility, for the losses I take all the blame.’
‘Your willingness to shoulder the blame does you much credit but us little good.’ Bayaz sighed as if reproving a naughty grandson. ‘But let us learn the lessons, gentlemen. Let us put yesterday’s defeats behind us, and look to tomorrow’s victories.’ Everyone nodded as though they had never heard anything so profound, even Finree’s father. Here was power.
She could not remember ever coming to dislike anyone so much, or admire anyone so much, in so short a time.
Dow’s meet was held around a big fire-pit in the centre of the Heroes, shimmering with heat, hissing and fizzing with the drizzle. There was an edgy feel about the gathering, somewhere between a wedding and a hanging. Firelight and shadow make men look like devils, and Craw had seen ’em make men act like devils more’n once. They all were there – Reachey, Tenways, Scale and Calder, Ironhead, Splitfoot and a couple score Named Men besides. The biggest names and the hardest faces in the North, less a few up in the hills and a few more with the other side.
Looked like Glama Golden had got in the fight. Looked like someone had used his face for an anvil. His left cheek was one big welt, mouth split and bloated, blooms of bruise already spreading. Ironhead smirked across the ring of leering faces like he’d never seen a thing so pretty as Golden’s broken nose. They had bad blood between ’em, those two, so bad it poisoned everything around.
‘What the hell are you doing here, old man?’ murmured Calder as Craw jostled into place beside him.
‘Damned if I know. My eyes ain’t all they used to be.’ Craw took a hold on his belt buckle and squinted around. ‘Ain’t this where we go to shit?’
Calder snorted. ‘It’s where we go to talk it. Though if you want to drop your trousers and give Brodd Tenways some polish for his boots I won’t complain.’
Now Black Dow strolled out of the shadows, around the side of Skarling’s Chair, chewing at a bone. The chatter quieted then died altogether, leaving only the crackle and crunch of sagging embers, faint snatches of song floating from outside the circle. Dow stripped his bone to nothing and tossed it into the fire, licking his fingers one by one while he took in every shadow-pitted face. Drew out the silence. Made ’em all wait. Left no doubts who was the biggest bastard on the hill.