To Ride Hell’s Chasm

Mykkael nodded, unwilling to divulge the uncanny chill that witch thoughts had strung through his gut. ‘When you see Taskin to account for my treatment—yes, he gave such orders! Don’t insult that man’s competence with denials. When you call on the tyrant to give him your gleanings, could you pass on the gist of my officer’s report?’

Granted the willing assent he expected, Mykkael pawed into a clothes chest for a fresh pair of breeches and clean shirt. He dressed, still speaking, despite the discordant clamour of voices arisen in the downstairs wardroom. ‘Relate the details you recall, as you wish. But the particulars I insist on are these: the Falls Gate seeress was murdered by drowning. The flower girl who sought her fortune knows nothing. My informers drew blanks. The streets show no sign of suspect activity.’ He moved to the cot, retrieved mud-crusted boots. ‘I have three lines of inquiry yet to pursue, and one more point I plan to tell Taskin in person. He can expect me. I’ll be at the Highgate to meet him in three hours.’

The argument below subsided to grumbles, cut by the thump of someone’s feet, climbing the inside stairwell. Mykkael registered this as his fingers threaded the buckle that fastened his sword harness. Armed, now all business, he rebounded off his good leg, hooked the satchel of remedies from his path, and relinquished the obstruction into Jussoud’s startled hands.

That forthright flow of urgency saw the captain through the doorway, a moving flicker of pale shirt doused into the shadow beyond.

What happened next, no man saw.

Jussoud’s more orderly exit followed at Mykkael’s heels. Bearing satchel and basket, the nomad began his descent of the spiral stair. He gained no more warning than a sigh of stirred air, then an indistinct sense of blurred movement. At the next step, he blundered into the falling, limp bulk of a sandy-haired palace guardsman. The wretch was unconscious. His unstrung frame crashlanded into Jussoud’s dumbfounded embrace. The healer staggered. Half turned to save his precious oil jars from smashing against the stone wall, he narrowly managed to salvage his balance and sit with the dropped body sprawled in his arms.

‘Jussoud, he’s not harmed!’ Mykkael assured him from below. Unrepentant, he spoke in low-voiced eastern dialect, as direct and brutal an admission of fact that his pre-emptive strike was deliberate.

‘I’ll have to tell Taskin,’ the masseur warned, also using his native language.

‘Your loyalty demands that,’ Mykkael agreed. He stood his ground, all brazen, cold nerve, and sustained Jussoud’s glare without flinching. ‘Serve as my witness with the same honesty. You received my report, and heard out my intentions before this palace guardsman made his way over my threshold. Please see the fellow is properly cared for. My men downstairs will assist you. They’ll dispatch a litter, as needed, to bear him in comfort through Highgate.’

Under his healer’s questing touch, Jussoud felt the vigorous signs of an angry victim starting to rouse. ‘I will pray to my gods that you are a man who knows the full measure of trouble you stir. Little good comes of taunting the tiger.’

Mykkael spun without words. His step in departure made not a sound, a rare feat for a man who was crippled.

Jussoud sighed. As uneasy as though he had just sampled poison, he restrained the stunned guardsman’s thrashing. He could not regret leaving the captain at large. No safe method existed to detain Mykkael. As a killer, the man was chilling, for his speed and his unrivalled competence. He might be the linchpin the crown required to save Sessalie’s princess from danger. Yet if the contrary proved true: if the desert-bred was a traitor immersed in a covert conspiracy, the game piece haplessly caught in his path must survive to bear Taskin fair warning.

Prince Kailen suffered his punishing hangover immersed in his bath, the soaked hair at his nape crushed against the bronze rim, where he rested his pounding skull. Tendrils of scented steam rose about him, running sweat in rivulets down a complexion tinged greenish from nausea. When the crisp knock rattled the chamber door, Kailen whispered a curse. A crease stitched the corners of his shut eyes. Though he was in a sorry state to receive, the noise pained him worse than the prospect of unwanted company.

A dispirited flick of his Highness’s finger dispatched his hovering valet.

The manservant deferred to the prince’s condition. He moved on stockinged feet, and admitted the caller with hands that did their utmost to muffle the strident plink of the latch.

Cool air winnowed in. The draught puckered Kailen’s flushed skin, bearing the fashionable hyacinth perfume used by Devall’s court lackeys.

The Crown Prince of Sessalie decided his head ached too much to endure any lowlander’s penchant for ceremony. ‘The heir apparent of Devall may enter, as he pleases.’

The draught became a breeze as several bodies filed in.

Kailen cracked open bloodshot eyes. Through parted lashes, he sorted the blurred but sparkling impression of Devall’s maroon and gold livery. To the one pricked by the costly glimmer of rubies, he said, ‘They haven’t found any sign of her, yet. Not even that busy cur of a desert-bred, though he’s got the whole lower garrison scouring the town. All the inquiries they’ve run down, every whisper they’ve culled from the streetside gossip has drawn nothing but blanks.’

The Prince of Devall looked haggard, as though he, too, had not slept through the night. Composed by the grace of iron will and state poise, he inclined his groomed head to request the dismissal of the valet. ‘Might we speak of this privately?’

The fair royal in the bath tub shrugged streaming shoulders, then winced as his headache rebelled. He said testily, ‘What’s to hide? Every servant at court knows the details already. The kitchen maids bring back the lower town gossip on their return from the market.’

‘Even so,’ said the High Prince of Devall, his consonants considerately muted. ‘My words, and yours, bear more weight than a commoner’s.’ He waited, smiling in gracious tolerance, until the red-faced valet accepted the hint, and bowed himself out of the chamber.

The Crown Prince of Sessalie surveyed his immaculate counterpart, his inflamed eyes a troubled china blue, and his clenched fists couched in soap suds. ‘That’s all I know, in my servant’s hearing, or out of it. Nobody has a clue where my sister has gone, or what fate may have befallen her. We have no enemies, and no political significance to draw the interest of other nations. No one could have spirited her away without trace! Anja’s much too resourceful to pack up her nerve and submit. It’s not canny, to suppose she could have been kidnapped. Not in front of the nosy eyes of Sessalie’s inbred society.’

‘For myself, I prefer not to stand on presumption.’ The High Prince of Devall gave way to his frustration and paced, fastidiously skirting the puddles splashed on the marble-tiled floor. ‘Lady Shai is the princess’s closest confidante. Some change in habit, or a detail of Anja’s dress or mood may have caught her notice. An astute line of inquiry might prompt her recall. I wish, very much, to pay a call on her. Yet I need you along with me to observe propriety, do I not? Since the lady’s a maiden, titled and wealthy, and not yet promised by handfast?’

Given Kailen’s enervated sigh, the high prince’s manner turned pejorative. ‘You must come as I ask! I will not risk the least insult to Anja, or lend your court the mistaken impression that I would flatter another young woman with a visit in private company’

‘As if the sour opinion of Sessalie’s matrons could tarnish Devall’s reputation!’ Kailen managed a lame grin. ‘That’s laughable.’

The heir apparent stopped, his regard sharpened by a turbulent mix of sympathy and censure. ‘Her Grace is your sister, and the joy of her father’s old age. She is also the paragon of wit and good character I have chosen as our future queen. For my sake, and for the pride of my realm, you will honour her by maintaining appropriate form.’

‘Well then,’ Kailen sighed, his puckered fingers clenched on the tub rim as he arose, streaming soap froth in a cascade down lean flanks, ‘since I’m still too sotted to fasten my buttons, and you’ve excused my valet, your servants can kindly assist with my dress.’

Informally clad in his loose, white shirt, his sword harness and a labourer’s knee-length trousers, Mykkael threaded a determined course through the late-morning crush in the streets. Though the thoroughfares under Middlegate were narrow, the traffic parted before him. Passersby always stared at his back, no matter what hour he passed. Even lacking his blazoned surcoat, he drew notice, surrounded by fair northern heads and pale skin.

He met that difference straight on, and nodded a civil greeting to the matrons out shopping with cloth-covered baskets. He asked the foot traffic to pause, allowing the straining mules of an ale dray smooth passage as they toiled uptown. By the public well, he caught the scruff of a sprinting urchin to spare an aged man with a cane.

The oldster’s middle-aged daughter paused to thank him, then inquired after the princess. Mykkael gave his apology, said he had no news, then slipped like a moving shadow through the jostling press of women drawing water from the cistern. He kept a listening ear tuned to the snatches of talk that surrounded him: the idle speculation on bets for the summer game of horse wickets; complaints exchanged by servants concerning the habits of greatfolk; the chatter of young girls on the virtues of suitors; the irritation of a mother, scolding an unruly child. At random, Mykkael tracked the patterns of life embedded in Sessalie’s populace.

Princess Anja’s disappearance spun a mournful thread though the weave of workaday industry.

Mykkael let that tension thrum across his tuned instincts. Alert as a predator sounding for prey, he paused to sip a dipper of water in the shade, and overheard the Middlegate laundresses sharing news of a lost cat. His dark hand was seen as he hung the tin cup.

‘Captain!’ someone said, startled. Skirts swirled back as the women parted to give him space.

Mykkael nodded politely. Like most sheltered northerners, these folk met his glance with reluctance. If they had stopped challenging the authority he had never been seen to misuse, their hidebound tradition would not yet embrace the upset of a foreigner holding crown rank. Today, his appearance provoked a mixed reaction. While some folk still eyed him with outright distrust, or turned their shoulders to ward off ill luck, others met his presence with anguished appeal, as though the looming threat of a crisis forced them to a grudging trust. Now, his hardened experience offered them hope, that he might plumb their formless, uncivilized fears and retrieve their lost princess from jeopardy.

Mykkael surveyed faces, but found nothing suspicious. No furtive lurker dodged into the shadows. The crowd stayed innocuous. Nothing more than clean sun warmed the hilt of the longsword sheathed at his back. Only daylight nicked coloured fire through the women’s drop-glass earrings. To the bold matrons who approached him with questions, he answered: no, he had no further news of the princess; very sorry.

The captain moved on through the racketing din of Coopers’ Lane, where apprentices pounded iron hoops on to barrels. His step scattered a racing gaggle of children trying to catch a loose chicken. At due length, he reached the cool quiet of the gabled houses on Fane Street.

The physician lived on the corner, in a tidy two-storey dwelling with geraniums under the windows. Mykkael dodged an errand boy, hiked his strapped knee over the kerb, and chimed the brass bell by the entry.

A maidservant admitted him with punctilious courtesy and ushered him into a drawing room that smelled of waxed wood, and the musty antiquity breathed from the wool of a threadbare Mantlan carpet. Mykkael stood, rather than risk the pearl-inlaid chairs to the weapon slung from his harness. Hands linked at ease, he admired the animal figurines of carved ivory, then the ebony chests brought from the far south, with their corners weighted with tassels knotted from spun-brass wire.

The physician had been a well-travelled scholar, before he retired to Sessalie.

He entered as he always did, a plump, pink man with a myopic blink who moved as though shot from a bow. His clinical stare measured his visitor’s stance, then softened to smiling welcome. ‘Mykkael! You’re leg’s a bit better, today, is it not?’

The captain gave credit for that with his usual astringent humour. ‘Jussoud’s good work, not the bed rest your sawbones assistant prescribed me.’

‘Cafferty meant well,’ the physician apologized. ‘That’s his way of saying we don’t have a curative treatment.’ He glanced down, noticed his dripping hands, and sighed for the oversight that invariably made him neglect the use of a towel.

‘Your seeress drowned,’ he ran on, ‘though you know that already. My report would have reached you at daybreak. More questions? Ask quickly’ He darted a glance sideways. ‘I have a client waiting. A first pregnancy, bless her. She’s perched on the stool half unclothed, anxious and not at all comfortable.’

Mykkael nodded. ‘Quick, then. The apothecary agreed with your evaluation, but also concluded the old woman wasn’t poisoned.’

The physician stopped, caught the nearest carved chair, then sat down at the glass-topped table and folded his hands. ‘Oh dear. That’s not what we expected to hear.’ His brow furrowed under the combed fringe of his hair, gently faded to ginger and salt. ‘You now have a vexing mystery to solve.’

Mykkael raised his eyebrows. ‘Say on?’

The plight of his nervous client forgotten, the physician ticked off points on his fingers. ‘She drowned. In the moat. Lungs were sodden with water tinged green with algae. But she did not fall in while she was still conscious. She had long nails. None was broken, or dirt-caked. I saw no evidence that she ever attempted to claw her way up the bank or cling to the slime-coated rock of the wall.’

‘She could not swim?’ Mykkael suggested. ‘Sometimes panic sends that sort straight down.’

The physician blinked. ‘They always struggle. This one’s clothes were not torn or disarrayed. And she swallowed no water. Drownings do that, as they flounder.’ He paused to rub at his temples, as though the fraught pressure of his fingers might ease the troublesome bent of his thoughts. ‘Her stomach was empty, except for a pauper’s dinner of beans and bread.’ Silent a moment, he finally looked up, his mild face taut with sobriety. ‘Captain, I’m loath to be first to suggest this, but—’