The Serpent Bride. Sara Douglass

The only place even faintly resembling a city in the Outlands?”

      “Yes,” said Vorstus. “It’s the only place where families actually settle — as you say, everyone else lives a virtually nomadic life.” He rustled through the papers. “Lixel has investigated the Brunelle family … let me see … ah yes, here it is … eminent and highly educated —” Vorstus looked up at Maximilian “— well, as highly educated as an Outlander family can get, I imagine.” He looked back down to his papers. “Very distinguished. Somewhat cultured — I have no idea what Lixel means by that — and remarkably fecund.” He chuckled. “Lixel patently thought that a point in the woman’s favour.”

      “Yet this Lady Ishbel is the only remaining member of her family?” Egalion said. “That doesn’t seem very fecund to me.”

      “A plague went through the Outlands twenty years ago,” said Vorstus. “I don’t even need to consult Lixel’s report to remember that. Half the Central Kingdoms were affected by it as well, and Escator was damned lucky to escape its ravages. Anyway, the plague took out everyone in the Brunelle family except Ishbel, then an eight-year-old girl. So,” again Vorstus looked at Maximilian, but now with some humour twisting his mouth, “the Lady Ishbel comes with a considerable dowry along with her other attributes, which Lixel claims are a fair face and form, a decent education, and a pleasing manner of character.”

      “Why do I sense a ‘but’ coming?” said Maximilian.

      Vorstus put down the papers, and sighed. “There is a problem.”

      “Yes?” said Maximilian.

      “The Lady Ishbel is currently a ward with the Coil at their base in Serpent’s Nest. It is the Coil who offers her to you, Maxel.”

      There was utter silence, everyone staring at Vorstus.

      Egalion finally broke the quiet. “I thought the Coil was a myth! You can’t tell me that the vile … gut gazers … actually exist!”

      Vorstus looked down at his hands, now folding the papers over and over in his lap.

      “Vorstus?” said Maximilian softly.

      Vorstus sighed. “The Coil do exist. I have always believed them fact, and Lixel confirms it here.”

      “But they’re nothing like the myth,” said Garth. “Right, Vorstus?”

      The abbot remained silent.

      Maximilian gave a soft humourless laugh. “Do you — or Lixel — actually suggest I take to wife a woman who lives among those who slice open the bellies of the living in order to foresee the future?”

      “And who in the doing turn the entrails of the still-living into snakes?” said Egalion. “I can’t believe you — or Lixel — have actually thought to take this cursed offer so seriously as to bring it to the king’s attention.”

      Maximilian waved a hand. “Vorstus must have a reason. Let’s hear it”.

      “The lesser of the reasons is that the Lady Ishbel is not a priestess. She is not a member of the Order. The Coil took her in during the dark days when much of the Outlands was in turmoil. When Ishbel had no one, the Coil offered her a home.”

      “And a warm place to sleep amid the steaming entrails of their victims,” muttered Egalion.

      “The Coil’s priests and priestesses never leave their Order, Maximilian,” Vorstus continued. “The mere fact they offer her to you indicates that Ishbel has been their ward, but not their trainee.”

      Maximilian gave a shrug. “Why should I consider her? Gods, Vorstus, she comes tainted with all the vile reputation of the Coil … how could I take such a woman as my queen? No one would accept her.”

      “The Lady Ishbel comes with an added extra to her dowry, Maxel. The Brunelle family, as well as owning half of Margalit, also controlled vast estates in the principalities of Kyros and Pelemere in the Central Kingdoms, as well as the full manorial rights to Deepend. She would bring much-needed riches to Escator.”

      Maximilian said nothing, regarding Vorstus with unblinking eyes as he slowly stroked his chin with a thumb as he thought. Vast estates in Kyros and Pelemere. And full manorial rights to Deepend, the town and its land, which in turn controlled the trading and shipping rights to Deepend Bay to the south of Escator.

      Riches indeed, particularly to a king who, in the very act of escaping and then destroying the rich gloam mines, had virtually crippled Escator’s economy. Most of the past eight years had been spent, relatively unsuccessfully, trying to repair the country’s finances.

      What a difference this dowry could make.

      “How is it a lady from the Outlands manages to control the rights to Deepend?” Maximilian asked. He’d known there had been an absentee lordship on the place — Escator had the right to use the bay for its shipping but each year Maximilian paid heavily for the privilege to the steward of Deepend — but had always believed it belonged to one of the more reclusive Central Kingdom families.

      “The Brunelle family has lineage that stretches back many centuries,” Vorstus said. “Lixel writes that they picked up the Deepend rights via a fortuitous marriage two hundred years ago.”

      “And now the Coil, via Ishbel, offers those rights to me,” said Maximilian. “Why? Of what benefit can this be to them?”

      “You’re the least objectionable man on the aristocratic marriage market,” said Vorstus blundy, and Maximilian laughed, now with genuine amusement.

      “Ah!” he said. “Now I see. The Coil doesn’t want anyone from the Central Kingdoms getting them, eh?”

      “Indeed,” said Vorstus. “There’s bad blood between the Outlands and the Central Kingdoms, as well you know —”

      Maximilian grunted. The various kingdoms and principalities of the two regions had been posturing and threatening each other with war for years.

      “— and perhaps the Coil, who Lixel says are closely allied with the Outlanders through blood and geography, think to establish an alliance with Escator so that they may have a friend on the rear flank of the Central Kingdoms.”

      “So we get to the heart of the matter,” said Garth, silent until now as he studied Maximilian’s reactions. “Is the thought of the economic advantage of the woman enough for Maxel to forget her more ghastly acquaintances?”

      “There is no need for anyone beyond this room to know of the Lady Ishbel’s ‘more ghastly’ acquaintances,” said Vorstus softly. “She is the well-dowered Lady Ishbel Brunelle, of Margalit. An Outlander, to be sure, but one wealthy enough, and well-mannered enough, for that slight geographical stain to be conveniently forgotten. Maximilian,” Vorstus leaned forward, “no one need ever know of her time with the Coil.”

      “You really want me to consider this, don’t you,” said Maximilian.

      “Aye,” said Vorstus, “I don’t think you can ignore it. Escator needs her wealth, and you need a wife to mother you a family. Damn it, all you need do is meet with her, talk, and if you don’t like her then walk away.”

      “How would I know,” said Maximilian, “if she really is ‘just a ward’ of the Coil, and not some fully blooded member of their vile Order? I don’t want some witch slitting open my belly in the middle of the night to see what the weather will be like for her tea party the following week.”

      Vorstus held out his right hand, showing Maximilian the mark of the quill on the back of its index finger. “If she was a priestess of the Coil then she would be marked with the sign of the Coil, the coiled serpent, somewhere on her body, just as I am marked with this as a member of the Order of Persimius. Just as you are marked with the Manteceros.”

      Maximilian absently touched his right bicep, where, just after his birth, the mark of the Manteceros — the semi-mythical