The Black Hawks. David Wragg

a man in sworn service to a lord who is a guest at this palace, and your deeds and … presentation are those of our liege. It’s time you acted like it.’

      ‘I can take a beating, if Sokol wishes to make me an example.’

      ‘That should not be a point of pride,’ she said, her voice steel-edged. ‘You swore an oath. This behaviour shames your uncle and your family.’

      ‘If my step-uncle wants the value of my service, he can earn it.’

      ‘Boy, how much do you think your service is worth?’

      For a moment she was snarling, then calm swept over her face. She turned and began striding away, boots clicking on the flagstones. ‘Ten bells, Vedren Chel, with the robes,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘Obey, or don’t. But attend to your stench.’

      A breeze ruffled the palms in the courtyard, and they slapped together like a round of sarcastic applause. Chel caught a whiff of himself, recoiled, then nodded his thudding head in bitter acknowledgement.

      ‘Fine.’

      ***

      Chel bent over one of the stables’ water-troughs, scooping handfuls of cool, musty water over his face. A palace horse watched him from the dark of its stable. Chel did his best to ignore it. He felt disapproved of enough already.

      ‘You’re up, Master Chel! Up-ish, at least.’ A broad and beaming figure in a battered guardsman’s uniform was at his elbow. ‘Didn’t think we’d be seeing you for a good while this morning.’

      ‘Ungh,’ Chel grunted, and wiped himself down with a horse blanket. ‘Heali.’

      ‘So,’ the guardsman said, leaning forward, in a conspiratorial fashion. ‘Did you win?’

      Chel pressed one palm to his thudding temple. ‘In a manner of speaking.’

      Heali chuckled, a sound like marbles rattling. ‘Can’t say no to a challenge, can you, my boy?’

      Chel grunted again and leaned back against the stable wall. The stable-yard churned with a gathering retinue, another of the minor lords assembling his host now that the campaigning season was drawing to a close. Chel watched the formation of their column with envious eyes. Within the hour, the column would be on the road, and its host would be back in their homes before winter hit.

      ‘They’re not staying for the festival, then,’ Heali said with a nod to the milling horse. ‘Any chance your lot …?’

      Chel spat a wad of sticky dust. ‘Sokol’s so obsessed with rubbing up against royalty that he’s hanging on for the court’s arrival, and he’s chummy enough with the grand duke that we’ll not be kicked onto the road any time soon. I’m not that lucky.’ He flicked away a spherical fly, hangover sweat mixed with trough water dripping from his brow. ‘Five hells, how can you stand this heat?’

      Heali chuckled again. ‘How can you not, Master Chel? Thought you Andriz were the blooms of the desert?’

      ‘Give it a rest, Heali. I grew up in the south. It’s not that hot down there, not like this – by the harvest festivals we’re usually a month or two into the rains.’

      Heali cast a glance up at the pristine, punishingly cloudless sky. ‘Doesn’t look like rain any time soon, Master Chel. So happens, I was heading down to the kitchen to muster a bit of breakfast – care to join me? You look like a man in need of a feed.’

      Chel’s stomach hissed bile. His hangover agreed.

      ***

      ‘Kitchen’s closed.’ A hard-faced woman in a smock barred the doorway.

      ‘Closed? Nonsense, my jewel,’ Heali replied. ‘How could the kitchen be closed in a festival week? We’re but days from the feast!’

      The woman’s eyes narrowed. She had a jaw like quarried stone and weathered hands to match. ‘Off-limits, then. Especially to you, Heali, and whoever’s riding your pocket today.’ She flicked a sneer at Chel, who was quite offended. ‘This is no time for your antics – we’ve got the Order of the Rose at our shoulders. Get your meat-fingers gone before the churchmen come looking at you too.’

      The door slammed shut. Heali frowned at it, thick lips pursed. Chel frowned at Heali.

      ‘My apologies, Master Chel, thought I’d be able to lend a hand to a brother in need. Come up looking a right pillock, eh?’

      Chel gave no answer. His head hurt, and his palms and shoulder ached. His hunger had become a hot blade in his gut. He rubbed one hand over his eyes and started walking back toward the courtyard. Sokol’s robes and the lowport beckoned, and he was in no fit state for it. ‘I need to be going—’

      ‘Heading out on an errand? Surely not on an empty stomach?’

      Chel stopped in the courtyard archway, one foot in brilliant sunlight, squinting against the glare, already tired of the guardsman’s manner. ‘You’re in luck, my boy,’ Heali continued with a munificent smile, ‘because your friend Heali knows where to get the best breakfast in all Denirnas Port.’

      ‘You do?’ At that, Chel perked up.

      ‘Of course, my boy. Permit me to atone for my failing – I’ll take you myself.’

      ‘For the last time, Heali, stop calling me boy.’

      ‘I mean no disrespect, Master Chel. You’re still boyish from my end of the wick, that’s all.’ Heali raised a hand with a disarming grin. ‘Come, let’s take a wander. There’s a little fellow in the lowport, does the most arresting grilled things.’

      Chel gave a sour glance back down the gloomy hallway to the closed kitchen door. ‘What do the Church care of festival preparations anyway?’ he said.

      A voice like the earth moving rumbled in the darkness behind them. Chel hadn’t even realized there was a passageway there. ‘Because the festival of King’s Vintage is a lie, a sop to the masses to blot the vile truth from their eyes.’

      He turned to find a gaunt figure looming over him, eyes mere hollows in the gloom, his dome of skull ringed by ragged grey locks. He carried a crate of earthenware oil lamps, clinking in time to his lurching steps. Heali sniffed. ‘Lengthened your chain for the festival, did they, Mad Mercunin?’

      ‘I know what they call me, Heali,’ the cadaverous giant replied. ‘Do you know what they call you?’

      Heali laughed, but Chel detected an edge to it. ‘Go on, sod off, you walking corpse. Go whisper your secrets to the cliff ducks.’

      Mercunin shuffled away into the gloom, the crate heavy in his arms. ‘Hey,’ Chel called, ‘what is the “vile truth”?’

      The well-deep voice echoed from the stones as the porter slid into darkness. ‘That the king is dead, and we shall all of us burn.’

      Heali snorted. ‘Take no heed of mad men, Master Chel,’ he said, then walked out into the bustle of the courtyard, nodding for Chel to follow. With a bemused sigh he did, the old porter’s words still rattling in his head.

      ***

      ‘Is this place far?’ Chel said as they wandered through the open palace gate, beneath the strutting statue of Grand Duke Reysel. A fresh streaking of bird shit adorned the statue; a pair of skivvies were doing their best to remove it. Duty guards nodded to Heali as they passed. ‘I need to be back by ten bells.’

      ‘And why’s that, Master Chel?’

      ‘Sokol will be expecting me to present him with his freshly arrived festival robes. Should have been here days ago, but you know what it’s like this time of year.’

      ‘I do indeed. Can’t spend days on the walls without learning the motion of the ocean, eh?’ Heali picked his way down the meandering ridge path, steering around the irregular mule traffic plodding uphill, festival loads stacked high.