To Ride Hell’s Chasm

Taskin prowled the chamber, his booted step silent as a wraith’s. An uneasy pall of silence gripped the cream and copper opulence of the princess’s private apartment. Such stillness by itself framed a stark contradiction to her tireless spirit and exuberance.

Anja’s zest for life met the eye at every turn. The plush, tasselled chairs were left in compulsive disarray by her penchant for casual company. Gilt and marble tabletops held a riot of spring flowers, with long-stemmed hothouse lilies forced to share their porcelain vases with the weeds and wild brambles plucked from the alpine meadows. On the divan, a book of poetry had a torn string riding glove marking its vellum pages. Abandoned in the window nook, a seashell scavenged from the beaches of Devall overflowed with a jumble of pearl earrings and bangle bracelets. The playful force of Anja’s generosity clashed with the constraints of royal station: the seneschal’s latest scolding had been blatantly ignored. The massive chased tea service kept to honour state ambassadors had been shanghaied again, to cache the salvaged buttons for the rag man.

Even Taskin’s impassive manner showed concern as he subjected the princess’s intimate belongings to a second, devouring scrutiny.

‘My Lord Commander,’ the maid appealed, ‘if Princess Anja planned an escapade, I never heard a whisper. Her maid of honour, Shai, was the one who shared her confidence the few times she chose to flaunt propriety.’

‘But the Lady Shai knows nothing. I’ve already asked,’ a voice interjected from the hallway.

Taskin spun. His glance flicked past the startled maid, while the elite pair of guards flanking the entry bowed to acknowledge Crown Prince Kailen.

His Highness lounged in stylish elegance against the door jamb, still clad in satin sleeves and the glitter of his ruby velvet doublet. Fair as his sister, but with his sire’s blue eyes, he regarded the ruffled icon of palace security with consternation. ‘Don’t dare say I didn’t warn you, come the morning. Anja’s surely playing pranks. She’s probably laughing herself silly, this minute, enjoying all the fuss. Ignore her. Go to bed. She’ll show up that much sooner, apology in hand. Did you really think she’d wed even Devall’s heir apparent without any test of his affection?’

‘That would be her Grace’s touch, sure enough,’ a guardsman ventured. ‘Subtlety’s not her measure.’

And the smiles came and went, for the uproar that had followed when her Grace had exposed the pompous delegate from Gance as a hypocrite. On the night he fled the realm, flushed and fuming in disgrace, she had asked the pastry cook to serve up a live crow inside the traditional loaf of amity.

‘Furies, I remember!’ But Taskin did not relax, or share his guardsmen’s chuckles of appreciation. Instead, his tiger’s stalk took him back to the window, where he tracked the distanced voices of the searchers beating the hedges in the garden. They met with no success, to judge by the curses arisen over snagging thorns and holly. ‘No harm, if you’re right, Highness. We’d survive being played for fools.’ The commander inclined his head, meeting the crown prince’s insouciance with deliberation. ‘But if you’re wrong? Anja taken as a hostage could bring us to our knees, drain the treasury at best. At worst, we could find ourselves used as the bolt hole for some warring sorcerer’s minion.’

An uncomfortable truth, routinely obscured by Sessalie’s bucolic peace: the icy girdle of the mountains was the only barrier that kept the evil creatures from invading the far north.

‘May heaven’s fire defend us!’ the maid whispered, while the nearer guardsman made a sign to ward off evil.

If not for the peaks, with their ramparts of vertical rock, and the natural defences of killing storms and glaciers, tiny Sessalie would not have kept its stubborn independence. The hardy breed of crofters who upheld the royal treasury would never have enjoyed the lush alpine meadows, which fattened their tawny cattle every summer, or the neatly terraced fields, with their grape crops and barley brought to harvest through the toil of generations.

‘Show me the sorcerer who could march his army across the Great Divide.’ The crown prince dismissed their fears with his affable shrug. A drunk hazed on cloud wine might dream of such a prodigy; not a sober man standing on his intellect.

Even to Taskin’s exacting mind, the worry was farfetched. The flume that threaded that dreadful terrain was nothing if not a deathtrap. Foolish prospectors sometimes came, pursuing gold and minerals. They died to a man, slaughtered by hungry kerries, or else drowned in the rapids, their smashed bones spewed out amid the boil of dirty froth that thundered down the mouth of Hell’s Chasm. Skilled alpinists occasionally traversed the high rim. Survivors of that route had been favoured by freakish luck and mild weather, since the arduous climb over Scatton’s Pass required altitude conditioning for a crossing that took many weeks. Yet where storms and exposure sometimes spared the hardy few, the ravine killed without discrimination. The relentless toll of casualties had extended for time beyond memory.

‘I thought you’d want to know,’ Prince Kailen said at length. ‘My father stayed lucid long enough to oppose the seneschal’s complacency. His sealed order sent for the Captain of the Garrison.’

Commander Taskin left the window, his brows raised in speculation. ‘Were you concerned I’d been pre-empted? Not the case. If you’re wrong, and your sister’s disappearance isn’t an innocent joke, then we could have unknown enemies lurking in the lower citadel. Had his Majesty not dispatched the summons, I would have done the same. Has the garrison man arrived yet?’

‘He should reach the palace at any moment.’ Prince Kailen straightened up and jumped to clear the doorway for Taskin’s abrupt departure. ‘I expected you’d wish to attend the royal audience.’

The commander hastened towards the stair, in unspoken accord that the seneschal ought not to be left in sole charge. All too often, of late, the aged King of Sessalie lapsed into witless reverie. ‘While I’m gone, Highness, have the grace to show my guardsmen every likely nook your royal sister could have used for a hideaway’

The gate guard who emerged to meet the herald’s band of outriders was the son of a noble, marked by his strapping build and northern fairness. His smart scarlet surcoat fell to his polished boots, which flashed with the gleam of gilt spurs.

‘Captain Mysh kael?’ His aristocratic lisp softened the name’s uncivil consonants. Cool, cerulean eyes surveyed the laggard still astride. ‘The king’s summons said, “at once.’“

‘Never seen a man limp?’ Mykkael barked back, refusing to be hustled like a lackey. Bedamned if he would jump for any lordling’s petty pleasure, aware as he was that his dark skin raised contempt far beyond the small delay for the care he took to spare his aching knee.

The guardsman disdained to answer. Once the captain had dismounted, he extended a gloved hand and brusquely offered a bundled-up cloak with no device.

Mykkael passed his winded horse to the hovering groom and received the hooded garment, his smile all brazen teeth. No one had to like his breeding. Last summer’s tourney had proved his deadly prowess. Crippled or not, the challenge match that won his claim to rank had been decisive. If the upper-crust gossip still dismissed the upset as fickle, he could afford to laugh. His strong hand on the garrison manned the Lowergate defences. That irony alone sheltered Sessalie’s wealthy bigots, and granted them their pampered grace to flourish.

Mykkael flipped the plain cloak across his muscled shoulders. The hem trailed on the ground. As though his slighter frame and desert colouring made no mockery of pretence, or the gimp of his knee could be masked, he gestured towards the lamplight avenue, its refined marble pavement gleaming past the shadow of the Highgate. ‘After you, my lord herald.’

No streetwise eye was going to miss the precedent, that the Captain of the Garrison came on urgent, covert business to the palace.

‘By every bright power of daylight, Captain! Try not to draw undue attention to yourself.’ Through a tight, embarrassed pause, the herald gamely finished. ‘The royal household doesn’t need a sensation with Devall’s heir apparent here to contract for his bride.’

‘His Majesty commands my oath-bound duty to the crown,’ Mykkael acknowledged. ‘But isn’t that golden egg already broken? To my understanding, we’re one piece short for promising the man a royal wedding.’

Served a censuring glance from the ranking guardsman, the herald gasped, appalled. ‘On my honour, I didn’t breathe a word!’ To Mykkael, he added, urgent, ‘You’d better save what you know for the ears of the king and his seneschal.’ He waved his charge along, taken aback a second time as he had to push his stride to stay abreast.

For Mykkael, the discomfort wore a different guise: beyond Highgate’s granite arch, with its massive, grilled gates, he shouldered no citizen’s rights, and no authority. Above the jurisdiction of the Lowergate garrison, he became a king’s officer, pledged to bear arms in crown service. His claim to autonomy fell under the iron hand of Commander Taskin of the Royal Guard. That paragon was the son of an elite uplands family, handpicked to claim his title at his predecessor’s death. His prowess with the sword was a barracks legend, and his temperament suffered no fool gladly.

A man groomed to stand at the king’s right hand, on equal footing with the realm’s seneschal, would have small cause to welcome an outsider and ex-mercenary, obliged to prove his fitness in a yearly public tourney until he scrounged the means to fund retirement.

‘I hope your sword’s kept campaign-sharp, and without a speck of rust,’ the palace guardsman ventured in snide warning. ‘If not, the commander will tear you to ribbons, in the royal presence, or out of it.’

Captain Mykkael raised his eyebrows, his sudden laughter ringing off the fluted columns that fronted the thoroughfare. ‘Well, thank the world’s bright powers, I’m a garrison soldier. If I wore a blade in his Majesty’s presence, rust or not, I’d be tried and hung for treason.’

Stars wheeled above the snow-capped rims of the ranges, their shining undimmed as the face of disaster shrouded the palace in quiet. On the wide, flagstone terrace, still laid for the princess’s feast, a chill breeze riffled the tablecloths. It whispered through the urns of potted flowers, persistent as the stifled conversations of the guests who, even now, refused to retire. Of the thousand gay lanterns, half had gone out, with no servants at hand to trim wicks. Silver cutlery and fine porcelain lay in forlorn disarray, where distraught lady courtiers had purloined linen napkins to stem their silenced onslaught of tears.

The staunch among them gathered to comfort Lady Shai, whose diamond hair combs and strings of pearls shimmered to her trembling. No one’s calm assurance would assuage her distress, no matter how kindly presented.

Prince Kailen’s suggestion of practical jokes had roused her gentle nature to fiercely outspoken contradiction. ‘Not Anja. Not this time! Since the very first hour the Prince of Devall started courting her, she has spoken of nothing else! Merciful powers protect her, I know! Never mind her heart, the kingdom’s weal is her lifeblood. She once told me she would have married a monster to acquire seaport access for the tradesmen. She said—oh, bright powers! How fortune had blessed her beyond measure, that the prince was so comely and considerate.’

A wrenching pause, while Shai sipped the glass of wine thrust upon her by the elderly Duchess of Phail. The ladies surrounding her collapse glanced up, hopeful, as Commander Taskin ghosted past on his purposeful course for the audience hall.

‘Any news?’ asked Lady Phail, her refined cheeks too pale, and her grip on her cane frail with worry.

Taskin shook his head. ‘Not yet.’

Lady Shai tipped up her face, her violet eyes inflamed and swollen. ‘Commander! I beg you, don’t listen to the crown prince and dismiss my cousin’s absence as a folly. Upon my heart and soul, something awful has befallen. Her Grace would have to be dead to have dealt the man she loves such an insult.’

The commander paused, his own handkerchief offered to replace the sodden table linen wrung between Shai’s damp fingers. ‘Rest assured, the matter has my undivided attention.’

He nodded to the others, found a chair for Lady Phail, then proceeded on his way. Ahead, a determined crowd of men accosted the arched entry that led to the grand hall of state. The stout chamberlain sighted the commander’s brisk approach and raised his gold baton. ‘Make way!’ His hoarse shout scarcely carried through the turmoil.

Commander Taskin lost patience. ‘Stand down!’

The knot cleared for that voice, fast as any green batch of recruits. The chamberlain pawed at his waist for his keying. ‘You’ve come at last. Thank blazes. The king is with the seneschal.’ Still too rattled to turn the lock quickly, the fat official gabbled to forestall the commander’s impatience. ‘His Majesty sent a herald to the lower keep and summoned that sand-whelped upstart—’

Taskin interrupted, sharp. ‘The Captain of the Garrison? I already know. He’s a fighter, no matter what she-creature bore him. His record of field warfare deserves your respect.’

As the double doors parted, Taskin did not immediately walk through. He pivoted instead, catching the petitioners short of their eager surge forward. ‘Go home! All of you. My guardsmen are capable. If your services are needed, I’d have you respond to the crown’s better interests well rested.’

Through a stirring of brocades, past the craning of necks in pleated collars, a persistent voice arose. ‘Is there crisis?’

Another chimed in, ‘Have you news?’

‘No news!’ Taskin’s bark cut off the rising hysteria. ‘Once the princess is found, the palace guard will send criers. Until then, collect your wives and retire!’

‘But Commander, you don’t understand,’ ventured the fox-haired merchant whose dissenting word rose the loudest. ‘Some of us wish to offer our house guards, even lend coin from our personal coffers to further the search for her Grace.’