He took a deep breath, calmed himself and strode down The Thread, nodding and smiling at all he passed though there was only anxiety on the streets. There was an ugly undercurrent too and he felt eyes on him, not all of which were friendly.
Sol walked down the alleyway to the side of the inn and opened the gate to the yard. In the stables to his left Jonas was grooming his horse. The other two mares were turned out into the small paddock at the back of the inn. There were the clattering sounds of work going on in the kitchens and someone was whistling tunelessly to the accompaniment of a sweeping broom.
‘Jonas, how are you feeling?’
Jonas turned a beaming face on Sol and ran over. Sol hugged him and ruffled his hair. He was going to be every bit as big and powerful as his father. Sol hoped he got his hair from his mother’s side.
‘I’m fine, Father. Did you tell them what Sha-Kaan said? What are we going to do? He’s in danger, Father, I can feel it. Despite what he says. We have to help him. What’s going to happen?’
Sol fought the urge to crush his son to him and burst into tears. A wound opened in his heart and the ache was unbearable.
‘Everything will be all right, Jonas. I promise.’
Jonas pulled back and looked up at Sol, his head cocked to one side and his eyebrows raised.
‘I’m thirteen, Father, I’m not stupid. That doesn’t mean anything. Only little Hirad would be satisfied with that sort of answer. What are you going to do? It hurts in here.’ Jonas placed his hand on his chest. ‘The Kaan are fading.’
‘What do you mean?’ Sol crouched down and took Jonas’s arms. ‘Fading how?’
‘Their link to Balaia, to me and all the Dragonene. The melde. It’s weakening. I can feel it.’
‘Then you aren’t fine, are you? Why didn’t you say this before?’
‘I didn’t know before, Father. Or I wasn’t sure what I was feeling.’
‘And I’m fifty-one and I’m not stupid either. Tell me what happened. ’
Sol stared into Jonas’s eyes. The young man was frightened beneath the bravado, and to see it in him was a sword to the soul.
‘It was the last fleeting thought Sha-Kaan gave me. The melde is attacked directly. Dragons resting in their Klenes have been killed where they lie. Inter-dimensional space is filled with enemies. What happens if they kill Sha-Kaan, Father?’
‘They won’t. He’s too smart and too powerful. But this is big information for our fight to come. Why didn’t you tell someone?’
‘Because I was waiting for you to come home. Don’t be angry with me.’
Sol pulled Jonas into another embrace. ‘All right, son. You’ve done the right thing.’
‘What happens now?’
‘We get you sorted out. I’ll speak to Denser. There will be others in your situation after all.’
‘What about the enemy? What about what you told them?’
Sol stood. ‘That’ll have to wait.’
Jonas followed Sol into the inn. The kitchens were a-buzz with activity but there was none of the usual humour in the voices he heard. Diera was wiping down tables in the bar, and when she turned to see who it was, her face turned his heart to dust.
‘What’s up?’ he asked. ‘Somebody die?’
Diera threw her cloth into the pail. Water slopped onto the floor.
‘You, apparently.’
‘Wait outside, Jonas.’
‘What does she—?’
‘Jonas!’ Sol caught himself. ‘Please, son, just for a moment.’
‘All right.’
Sol waited until Jonas had closed the door behind him.
‘Denser’s been here, has he? Doesn’t waste much time, I’ll give him that.’
Diera turned her back on him. ‘Yes, he has. At least there’s someone in this ridiculous city who still has a steady head on their shoulders.’
Sol moved towards her. She wrapped her arms around herself and stiffened.
‘I need you to understand why there is no choice for me.’
He reached out a hand.
‘Don’t touch me, Sol.’ She rounded on him. ‘And I understand perfectly well, thank you. Your dead friends want you to join their merry band of lost souls, and you’re too stupid and blinded by your wonderful Raven past to see you’re being sold serpents for firewood.’
‘I can hear Denser in everything you say, Diera. So let me speak. Do you really think I’d be doing this if I felt there was any other choice? It’s a long shot, granted, but we are truly desperate. Denser has no answers and the Garonin will tear this city down stone by stone. Come with me to the west. I can protect you all the way and you can be first to follow me to our new home.’
‘Follow you? You’ll be dead, damn you! What good is that to me?’
‘There is no other way to save you and the boys.’
Sol hadn’t seen her arms tense and he felt the full force of the slap across his face. The sound ricocheted about the bar and Diera was screaming at him.
‘How dare you say that to me. Your death does not save us, it damns us. What will I say to the boys when nothing comes of it? That their father threw his life away after people long dead but still more important to him? You can’t do this to me, you can’t. I can’t do this without you. It isn’t life without you.’
Sol resisted the urge to reach out to her again. She stood tall and resolute despite her words. He chest was heaving and her cheeks were damp but she would not crumble.
‘What will you tell them if, by my actions, countless thousands are saved?’ he asked quietly. ‘What then? Would that be throwing my life away?’
Diera put a hand to his face and stroked the red mark she had made.
‘No, of course it wouldn’t, my darling. But you don’t do this any more. It’s all just a memory. You have to listen to Denser, to reason. The place to stand and fight is here. Chasing heroic deeds won’t work. Look at me. At Jonas and at little Hirad. Can you really bear to know you have seen us all for the last time? Can you die knowing you are depriving your children of the father they worship? Can your sacrifice really be worth such loss?’
‘What I cannot do is follow a path in which I do not believe and have that cause your deaths. This isn’t about being a hero, Diera. It never has been. It’s about doing the right thing. The only thing.’
‘Oh dear me, they really have done a number on you, haven’t they?’
Sol spun round. Denser had appeared from nowhere and was walking the last couple of paces to the front door.
‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ demanded Sol.
‘Determining the state of mind of my king,’ said Denser. His hand rested on the door bolt. ‘And I don’t like what I hear.’
‘I don’t have to explain myself to anyone who eavesdrops from behind a cloaking spell.’ Sol turned to Diera, sure she had knowledge of Denser’s presence, but the look on her face told him otherwise. ‘I suggest you leave, my Lord of the Mount.’
Denser nodded. ‘I will, Sol. And I’m sorry, I really am.’
He opened the door, stood back and began to cast. Six men were running in. Big men.
‘What the—’
Diera screamed Sol’s name. No time to think. Sol picked up a chair and threw it at Denser. It caught him around the waist and knocked him into the wall just below the painting of Hirad, disrupting his casting preparation. Sol strode towards the six, reached above his head and grabbed the cudgel from the beam mounts on his way past.
‘Come on then, boys. Let’s see you take an old man, eh?’
The college heavies fanned out, shoving tables and chairs aside to give themselves clear space. Sol moved into the centre of the room and tapped the end of the cudgel on the timber floor of the inn. To his left, Denser was getting back to his feet.
‘Diera, keep on poking that bastard; don’t let him get a spell off.’
‘With pleasure.’