Godblind. Anna Stephens
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is His Majesty?’ Durdil asked. The throne room was empty but for guards, the audience chamber vacant too.
‘The queen’s wing, Commander Koridam,’ Questrel Chamberlain said with an oily smile and the corners of Durdil’s mouth turned down. Third time this month.
Durdil’s breath steamed as he ducked out of the throne room and into a courtyard and took a shortcut through the servants’ passages. Winter was coming early this year, and the preparations for Yule were increasing apace.
Servants flattened themselves against the rough stone walls as he passed, ducking their heads respectfully. He nodded at each in turn. Durdil knew every servant in the palace; it made it that much easier to identify outsiders, potential threats to his king.
A guard stood in silence outside the queen’s chamber. Durdil slowed. He straightened his uniform and scraped his fingernails over the iron-grey stubble on his head.
‘Lieutenant Weaverson, is the king inside?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Did he speak to you?’
Weaverson was impassive as only a guard can be. ‘Not to me, sir. He was conversing with the queen.’
Durdil paused, chewing the inside of his cheek. Nicely phrased, no hint of mockery. ‘Thank you, Lieutenant. As you were.’
‘Sir,’ Weaverson said and thumped the butt of his pike into the carpet.
Durdil moved past him and pushed open the door to the queen’s private chambers. He hesitated on the threshold, bracing himself, and then stepped inside, closing the door behind him. Rastoth was in the queen’s bedroom, staring at the empty bed in confusion.
‘Your Majesty, you shouldn’t be in here,’ Durdil said quietly, and Rastoth looked over his shoulder, his eyes wide and watery. Durdil was struck by his gauntness. Where had that muscle and fat, that ruddy good humour, gone? This man was a shadow of himself.
‘Where is Marisa, Durdil? Where is my queen?’ Rastoth asked, his voice plaintive. ‘I was just talking with her. She was right here.’ He gestured vaguely and creases appeared between his brows. ‘But that’s not right, is it?’ he whispered. His fingers smoothed the coverlet over and over, the material thin and cold in the freezing room. No fire burning, no tapestries on the walls any more. No rugs.
Durdil walked towards him. ‘No, Sire, it’s not right,’ he said, his voice low. ‘Marisa’s gone, my old friend. Your queen’s dead. Almost a year now.’
Rastoth mewed like a seagull from deep in his chest. He collapsed on to the bed and hid his face in palsied hands too weak to support the rings on each finger. ‘No, that can’t be. That can’t be.’
He straightened suddenly, eyes bright with pain and coherence. ‘Murdered. Disfigured. Defiled here in this very room,’ he said, his voice harsh and broken and filling with rage. ‘My queen. My wife. And her killers still at large. Are they not, Commander? Despite your promises. Despite your every promise?’ He spat the words.
Durdil inhaled through flared nostrils and knelt before Rastoth, his knee protesting at the cold stone. No rugs because they’d been covered in blood. No tapestries because they’d been torn from the walls, covering the queen as her killers hacked through the material into her body. As though even the murderers couldn’t bear to look on what they’d done before they killed her, the destruction they’d wrought on her body and face.
No shattered door bolt, remember? Marisa opened the door to her murderers, let them in. Her guards dead on the threshold, dead facing into the room, not out of it. It ran like a litany through Durdil’s head. The queen knew her killers. Her guards knew them, hadn’t stopped them from entering, only engaged them when they were on their way out, the deed done.
Durdil swallowed the thoughts. ‘Yes, Sire. I have failed to find the killers of your queen. I have failed you.’ He chanced a look up. ‘But I have not stopped looking, my liege. I will never stop looking. I will find them. And we will bring them to justice.’
But Rastoth wasn’t listening. ‘Why, there she is. My little sparrow, hiding behind her loom.’ He scrambled to his feet, tripping on the edge of his cloak and his knee catching Durdil’s shoulder. He wobbled past and Durdil heaved himself to his feet, each of his fifty-six years an anvil on his back.
Rastoth had ducked behind the loom by the window. ‘Where are you hiding now, my pretty?’ he called. ‘Marisa? Marisa, my love.’
Durdil winced. ‘Your Majesty, we must return to your chambers. The hour grows late. Let us leave the queen to her rest. It has been a long day.’
Rastoth straightened and stared at Durdil through the strings of the loom, Marisa’s half-completed tapestry collecting dust on its frame. He’d tried this before and Rastoth had flown into a fury. Durdil had no idea which way it would play this time.
‘You’re right, of course, Durdil. She’s tired. I’m tired.’ He glanced fondly at the bed. ‘Sleep well, my beauty,’ he said, and tiptoed to the door, hissing at Durdil to do the same when the heels of his boots rang on the flagstones.
Durdil grimaced and rose on to his toes and together they crept to the door of the empty room and squeezed through it. Weaverson didn’t so much as glance in their direction, but Durdil stopped in surprise when he saw Prince Rivil.
‘We must let her rest, Commander,’ Rastoth murmured as he pulled shut the door. ‘Perhaps tomorrow my wife will be well enough to be seen by the court again, do you think?’
Rivil stepped forward and Durdil relinquished his place at the king’s side. ‘I’m sure Mother will be well again soon,’ he said, taking Rastoth’s arm. ‘For now it’s you I’m worried about. You shouldn’t be wandering around in the cold at this time of night.’
Durdil glanced at Weaverson and then followed his king and prince, listening to Rivil’s careful voice, watching his hand firm on his father’s elbow. ‘Come, Father, you should be abed,’ Rivil said with a nod to Durdil. Durdil nodded back and forced a smile for the prince.
Rastoth’s fits were getting worse and there was nothing Durdil could do about it. His friend and king was losing his grip on reality; he was slowly becoming a laughing-stock. Durdil wasn’t sure that even finding Marisa’s killers could end Rastoth’s illness now. Not that he had a single lead anyway. He knuckled his eyes hard and glanced again at Weaverson. Then he followed in the wake of his king.
Eleventh moon, seventeenth year of the reign of King Rastoth
Watcher village, Wolf Lands, Rilporian border
‘I’ve got you this time, you old bugger,’ Dom muttered. He was knee-deep in a stream that began high up in the Gilgoras Mountains and widened into the Gil, mightiest river of Rilpor. His bare feet were numb and the air smelt of snow, but the pike was cornered. Dom felt forward with his toes, the fishing spear up by his jaw.
The pike flicked its tail and Dom grinned as he edged closer. He’d laid the net behind him just in case, but this was becoming personal. A flicker again, and Dom lunged, stabbing down into the gloom.
The pike flashed past him, twisting out of the spear’s path, and Dom spun, slipped on a rock and went to one knee. He gasped at the cold but the pike wasn’t in the net, so he lunged back on to his feet and examined the pool.
‘Come out, come out, little fishy,’ he sang, ‘I want you in my belly.’
Instead the sun came out and reflected off the water, blinding him, and Dom blinked. The brightness stayed in his vision, like an ember bursting into life, racing into a conflagration.
Dom groaned as the image of fire grew. He dropped