The Tower of Living and Dying. Anna Smith Spark

Harder to remember his face, the exact colour of his hair and eyes. Carin would have stopped all this. Dragged him off for a drink so he forgot all about it. King Marith the Unmemorable, who did absolutely nothing at all. King Marith the Incapable, too stupefied to pick up a sword. Hard to think really properly seriously about killing people when you’re slumped in the gutter covered in puke and piss and drool.

      Gods, you were good to me, Carin, he thought.

      But this time I won’t fail.

      The man with the weather hand was called Ranene. A middle-aged man with a wart on his nose, who could call the wind and make the sea change and bring a ship safe to harbour in any storm. Black skin and hair, the accent of Allene. He spoke in a hoarse whisper like a rustling of dead leaves, where his throat had once been cut. Wore a collar hung with seed pearls to hide the scar. He had brought ships to safety and ships to drowning for hire, trading a ship’s fate to the highest bidder, before Selerie found him and made him his man. Safer that way, at Selerie’s court guiding the king’s ships. Sailors feared and hated a weather hand, knowing what they could bring a ship if their mood turned. Marith found him rather agreeable. He grinned cheerfully back at Marith when Selerie introduced them.

      ‘I’ll bring you across the sea as my king, My Lord,’ he said in his quiet scratched voice. ‘What comes when you come to shore … I don’t even have a hand.’ He paused: Marith had to strain to hear him. ‘But if your brother comes out to meet you with his ships … High winds and high waves might be handy. Does your brother have a weather hand, My Lord?’

      ‘No.’ King Illyn had never had one. Rare. Almost a myth. Hated. Feared. ‘No.’ Marith shut his eyes at the thought of the sea in storm. The greatest storm he had seen as a child, he had been ten years old, watching from his window awed as the waves shattered the rocks of Morr Head and the roofs of Morr Town. Ships smashed on the headland, bodies washed up far inland as the water rose over the streets of the town, trees and walls ripped away. Like the fire at Malth Salene, scouring the coastline clear. The air had stunk of seaweed and dead bodies, pallid puffy fish things dragged up from the depths, the broken stones of old cities far out beneath the sea. Sand and salt had been blown even onto the high balconies of Malth Elelane.

      A ship out in that. A ship out in that …

      ‘You could do it?’

      ‘I could.’

      ‘How?’

      Ranene said, ‘I feel the waves. I feel the water. I feel the sky.’ Pause. ‘I have no idea how I do it, My Lord. Especially as I was born a month’s walk from the sea.’

      Well, that was disappointing. But then he’d asked Thalia how she made the light and she could only say ‘I do’. ‘Magic’s a subtle thing’. ‘Magic’s a complex thing’. ‘Buggered if I know’ had at least the virtue of honesty.

      ‘Do it, then.’ Destroy them. Shatter them to pieces, smash them, break them. They had refused him. They should have opened the city to him. Welcomed him in. His brother! His mother! His home!

      Destroy them. Break them. Drown them. Curse them.

      Ranene bowed his head. ‘As My Lord commands.’ Looked happy as anything. Couldn’t imagine a weather hand got the chance that often to really let himself go.

      ‘The whore’s son’s ships will be broken, then,’ said Selerie. ‘Well and good. You will have command of the sea. But you will need to take Malth Elelane. Morr Town.’ He looked pointedly at Marith. ‘Ideally without either of them being entirely reduced to smoking ashes. Unless you think otherwise, Nephew, of course?’

      ‘We bring the ships in at night down the coast,’ said Lord Bemann. ‘March on Malth Elelane with the dawn. Order them to open the gates.’

      ‘No.’ Lord Stansel. A poor man, who held a poor island with few men to fight. A cripple, bound to his wheeled chair. But a clever man, with a reputation for good sense. ‘If we were taking a foreign city, even any other town on the Whites … But Malth Elelane … We are not coming as invaders. We are coming to bring our rightful king to his throne. We are coming to bury the last king in the tomb of his ancestors, where Altrersys himself lies. We do not sneak in the darkness like outlaws. We do not threaten. We do not cajole. Tiothlyn’s ships need to be destroyed. Yes. We send storms in the night to shatter the ships, frighten the people. We come into harbour with the dawn, beneath the banners of Amrath and King Marith His heir. Where Tiothlyn the Usurper has brought the sea’s anger, Marith the true king will bring strength and a favourable wind. The town and Malth Elelane will yield graciously to us as is our right.’

      ‘And if Morr Town doesn’t yield graciously to us? If Morr Town starts chucking banefire at us again? If Master Handy here somehow can’t whistle up a storm?’

      Somewhere in the barrel of honey the dead king stirred, moving. Shadows beating on the walls of the tent. Selerie looked about, almost seeing them. Fear in his eyes for what he’d begun. Marith took a breath. Say it. Say what must be done. ‘Lord Stansel is right. We sail straight into Morr Town harbour. And this time they will welcome me as they ought. Malth Elelane will yield. It was built for the kings of the line of Amrath. It is mine. Thus it will yield to me. Morr Town will yield or it will resist. If it resists, it will be destroyed. Morr Town is nothing. It can be rebuilt. Or I will build a new city elsewhere, leave the ruins as a warning.’ He looked at his uncle. ‘Morr Town has banefire. Very well then. It is only a liquid that burns. Morr Town has defenders. Very well then. They are only men with swords. We have an army. If half of that army falls, they also are only men. Men die. We need only enough left alive that the gates of the city are opened and my brother’s body hung above them in chains.’

      The men shifted. The lords of the White Isles. The king’s captains, the chosen companions of the Ansikanderakesis Amrakane. Thugs and chancers, men with younger brothers themselves, men who hungered for chaos and bloodshed, men who clung blindly to the right of the eldest born son as heir. Faces smiling. Rictus grins of terror. What did you think, Marith thought, what did you think it was we were to do? Osen shivered, looking from Marith to Selerie to Ranene. Fear in all their eyes. Seemed also to realize, suddenly, at last, what it was they were about.

      ‘Master Handy here can certainly whistle up a storm,’ said Ranene. His voice piped like a hollow reed blown between a boy’s hands. Profoundly irritating. But you could hear something in it. This one has power, Marith thought, looking at the man’s lumpy, warty nose. ‘The greatest storm you island men have ever seen. My Lord Selerie has seen some small amount of my powers. But for the king here, this king who is lord of death and shadows and ruined things … For him, I will raise such a storm as will never be forgotten. I will raise a storm that will shake the island of Seneth to its roots. The men of Morr Town will open their gates to him with joy and rejoicing. Those few that are not drowned.’

      Eyes watched him weak with horror. The shadows blinked and laughed in the corners of the tent.

      ‘A storm, then,’ said Selerie lightly. ‘Then I think we are dismissed for the night. Dinner is I think prepared and waiting. My Lords of the White Isles. Master Weather Hand. Till tomorrow.’ Selerie got to his feet. ‘A drink, Nephew, while we await your lady?’

      Selerie had somehow brought white bread and sweetmeats and cured venison over with him on campaign as well as wine and gilt chairs and a girl.

      ‘Amrath campaigned rough with his men,’ Marith said defensively when Thalia raised her eyebrows at it all. ‘You can’t move fast, with all this lot to lug around. We keep the proper ways of war here on the Whites.’ He thought of Skie’s bare tent, where the fact that it didn’t stink of mildew had been sign enough of power. A bedroll. A cloak. A change of shirt. A day’s ration of bread. Nothing else had seemed necessary. Nothing else had been necessary. ‘Yes, well, yes, I could, possibly, have put some more thought into the logistics.’ First course was apples baked in honey. The smell of the honey was making him nauseous. The spoon dug into the fruit and he couldn’t not think of his father’s head. Folds and folds of skin, the soft brown dapples like winking eyes; his father floating like an unborn baby, all soft and unformed … ‘Any