Grand Conspiracy: Second Book of The Alliance of Light. Janny Wurts

Fiark said, apologetic. Before she could embark on another spate of guttersnipe’s language, he handed across a scrap of correspondence written in neat, ciphered script. ‘His Grace gave the orders. Evenstar’s to be nowhere near the party who’s sent to make rendezvous. That’s for his own safety, as well as yours. He says the Koriani witches watch everything.’

      ‘But not here?’ Feylind snorted her frank disbelief. ‘That’s an excuse so brainless a baitfish won’t buy.’ She flicked back the paper, deflated by the fact the handwriting was recognizably genuine. Arithon s’Ffalenn remained the only living spirit she consistently failed to outwit or bully to gain her way.

      ‘Keep your boots off my desk,’ said her brother, aware of her intent in the fractional second as intention took form in her mind. Her time spent at sea had not changed the unspoken understanding between them. They still shared thoughts as though loomed from one thread, which made sustained argument difficult.

      ‘The warding was Dakar’s?’ Feylind asked. The capitulation Fiark had waited for, that had nothing to do with uncouth habits or seaboots, arrived with no fuss appended; Feylind twisted in the chair and unhooked the belt which hung her black-handled weapon. She drew a thick packet of letters from a pouch tucked underneath her man’s jerkin.

      Fiark accepted the bundle with apology rather than triumph. ‘The spellbinder wrought a protection so strong, some days I find just crossing the threshold sets me into a cold sweat.’ He settled the packeted documents into a locked drawer, then dealt his twin sister the leveling honesty that kept their inviolate trust. ‘There’s everything at risk. The Shadow Master all but lost his sanity at Riverton, which is why you’ll collect no more unsolicited correspondence in Tysan, and also stop plaguing me with dangerous, prying questions.’

      ‘I’ll do that, perhaps.’ Feylind poked her cheek, thoughtful. ‘But only if you’ll shed your fine airs and fop’s clothes and share beer at the Gull and Anchor.’

      ‘That dive!’ Fiark raked exasperated fingers through his neatly trimmed golden hair. ‘You have the bar keeper there in your pocket. He’d spike my drink out of gallantry just to weigh the odds in your favor, and anyway, getting me drunk will damned well not loosen my tongue far enough to spill the secret you’re craving.’

      ‘Bet on that?’ Feylind’s freckled nose crinkled to her wide grin. ‘Drink or cards, brother. I’ll see you under the table or beggared.’

      ‘Witch.’ Fiark laughed, rising. ‘You never could.’ Grown unfamiliarly fastidious since their beginnings as mackeral shack urchins in Merior, he tipped his crockery jug of goose quills and fished out a candle snuffer. Gone were the days when he would black his fingers pinching out wicks, or cause a careless spatter of wax on his employer’s lading lists.

      ‘You’re coming?’ Feylind prodded, and flung him the mantle he kept on a hook by the doorway.

      ‘Oh, I’ll share your shore liberty, you ungrateful wench. But not at a den as notorious as the Anchor. We’ll sup at the Halfmoon.’ Fiark thumbed through his keys for the one that secured the hasp lock on his office. ‘That way, I haven’t very far to stagger home, and you can pass out where you won’t find yourself tucked in some oily galleyman’s bed come the morning.’

      ‘Halfmoon’s for milksops who can’t hold their liquor,’ Feylind retorted, impatiently starting her clumping descent of the stair. ‘The landlady there’s a damned child’s nurse.’

      ‘Oh? Say that to her face, fat Moirey will fell you.’ Fiark caught up and matched her long-strided energy with the effortless grace of old habit. ‘Two silvers says you don’t dare.’ On his way past the second-floor tenant’s shut door, he paused, then grinned at the abusive threats the matron yelled from inside. He elbowed his sister before she could retort. ‘Don’t be a pest. The couple have children. Your thoughtless noise could set them crying into the wee hours of the morning.’

      With a shrug that reflected no shred of shame, Feylind answered his challenge. ‘Two silvers is ant’s piss, to brangle with Moirey. Do you want dinner, or a front seat to watch me get drubbed with a meat mallet?’ They reached the ground-floor landing; Feylind spun with a flourish and showed off her new trick, a neat, chest-high kick that tripped up the bar on the outside doorway. ‘I still have a fiends-plagued dent in my leg from the time the trull hit me with her fire iron.’

      ‘She did that?’ Fiark trailed into the narrow, brick-paved alley, rising with pleasure to the lively challenge of an evening in his sister’s company. ‘What was the offense? You pick a fight with one of her pimps?’

      ‘Drink or cards?’ Feylind persisted, a demented enjoyment setting a whetted edge to her grin. ‘Choose one or the other. You want every scrap of my sordid gossip? Then you’ll earn the right through a winning stake that proves you’re not the mim-faced town dandy you seem by the sissified cut of your clothes.’

      ‘Let it be cards,’ Fiark settled. ‘But if I win, the stake that I claim will be your promise, made on his own name, that you solicit no more news on behalf of his contacts. Nor will you try any other sly tricks that will lead to your knowing his business.’

      ‘I can’t give that promise,’ Feylind said in a sudden, desperate honesty. ‘You’ve seen for yourself how bad things are turning.’ She lowered her voice, lest the echoing sound of their passage carry too well down the alleyway. ‘Too many enemies are finding their way to the council tables. The Alliance’s cause has been tailor-made to further the townsmen’s entrenched hatreds. The hour could all too easily arrive when my role as Evenstar’s captain becomes the one cipher that could spare Arithon’s life.’

      Plain facts, and a truth that cut with razored pain to the heart; Fiark found himself wordless. ‘All right,’ he agreed, when at last his dark thoughts loosened enough to let him speak. ‘No promise, but your given intent that you honor his Grace’s wishes where your personal safety is at stake. He lost Caolle to the dark machinations of the curse. If your careless misadventures ever came to break his personal bond to our mother, I don’t want to share in his anguish.’

      Feylind drew breath, and Fiark interrupted in the same vein of brutal sincerity. ‘You didn’t see the damage wrought by Caolle’s death. Nor will you, if the Shadow Master’s fate resolves kindly. Wish for nothing else, Feylind. To do less would not be the act of a friend, but an axe blow to further the frightening cause of his Alliance enemies.’

       Late Winter 5654

      Foray

      Parrien s’Brydion, next oldest brother to the Duke of Alestron, paced the decks in bad temper. That morning had brought his family’s state galley into the overcrowded port city of Southshire. Across the merle chop of the harbor’s pale waters, he could already see that the dockside berths were jammed to the point of insanity.

      The lighterman he swore at dutifully shouted back. ‘We’ve got moorings still available. But only through making the proper application, with the fee paid in full at the harbormaster’s.’

      ‘May Dharkaron’s Black Chariot shear a linchpin and drop a wheel foursquare on the heads of the dolts in this city!’ Every bit as volatile as his youngest brother Mearn, but built with the shoulders of an axeman, Parrien snarled on in distemper. ‘Just what’re we expected to do meanwhile? Row in pissing circles while yon simpering, overdressed clutch of officials quibble and suck on their pen nibs?’

      With gauntleted fists hooked on his studded sword belt, he glowered askance, and then raised another ranging bellow, this time addressed to his crewmen. ‘Damn you all for a pack of mincing laggards! Quit fiddling with whatever part’s itching and sway out this gilt tub’s excuse for a shore tender!’

      The war captain and five mercenaries who strapped on their weapons to go ashore watched, resigned, since the shortage of dock space at this time of year was altogether predictable.

      Two months past the solstice, the rag