To Ride Hell’s Chasm

Taskin raised his eyebrows. His drilling survey swept the gathering, no man dismissed, even the foreign ambassador from the east, with his bullion brocade and his pleated silk hat, hung with a star sapphire and tassel. ‘Very well. I’ll send out the seneschal. He’ll take down the list of names and offered services.’

Prepared for the ripple of dismayed consternation, Taskin’s lean mouth turned, perhaps in amusement. The rest of his bearing stayed glass-hard with irony. Now, no man dared to leave, lest he be the first to expose his underlying insincerity. Once each pledge of interest was committed to ink, the commander could winnow the truly loyal from the hypocrites at leisure.

Beyond the broad doors, the throne and gallery loomed empty. The bronze chandeliers hung dark on their chains, the only light burning in the small sconce by the privy chamber. Outside its thin radiance, the room’s rich appointments sank into gloom, the lion-foot chairs reduced to a whispered gleam of gold leaf, and the crystalline flares off the glass-beaded tassels a glimmer of ice on the curtain pulls.

Taskin’s brisk footsteps raised scarcely a sound as he passed, a fast-moving shadow against lead-paned windows, faintly burnished by starlight. By contrast, the clash of voices beyond the closed door raised echoes like muffled thunder.

Taskin acknowledged the six guardsmen, standing motionless duty, then wrenched the panel open without knocking. He sized up the tableau of three men beyond as he would have viewed the pieces on a chessboard.

In the company of the King of Sessalie and the seneschal, the High Prince of Devall claimed the eye first. He was a young man of striking good looks. The hair firmly tied at his nape with silk ribbon hung dishevelled now, honey strands tugged loose at the temples. Though he sat with his chin propped on laced hands, his presence yet reflected the lively intelligence that exhaustion had thrown into eclipse. He still wore banquet finery: a doublet of azure velvet edged in bronze, and studded with diamonds at the collar. His white shirt with its pearl-buttoned cuffs set off his shapely hands. The signet of Devall, worn by the heir apparent, flashed ruby fire as he straightened to the movement at the doorway.

Taskin bowed, but as usual, never lowered his head. While the seneschal’s ranting trailed into stiff silence, and the king’s prating quaver sawed on, Devall’s prince appraised the commander’s rapid entry with amber eyes, dark-printed with strain. ‘Lord Taskin, I trust you bring news?’

‘None, Highness. Every man I have in the guard is assigned. They are diligent.’

The seneschal shot the commander a scathing glance for such bluntness. ‘If you’ve heard about the herald dispatched to the lower keep, can I rely on your better sense to restore the realm’s decorum? We scarcely need to raise the garrison to track down an errant girl!’

Taskin disregarded both the glare and the sarcasm. He would have honesty above empty words and false assurances. Nor would he speak out of turn before his king, whose maundering trailed off in confusion.

‘Your Majesty,’ Taskin cracked, striking just the right tone. ‘I have no word as yet on your daughter.’

A blink from the King of Sessalie, whose gnarled hands tightened on his chair. His gaunt frame sagged beneath the massive state mantle with its marten fur edging, and the circlet of his rank that seemed too weighty for his eggshell head. Nonetheless, the trace of magnificence remained in the craggy architecture of his face; a reduced shadow of the vigorous man who had begotten two bright and comely children, and raised them to perpetuate a dynasty that had lasted for three thousand years.

An authoritative spark rekindled his glazed eyes. ‘Taskin. I’ve sent for Captain Mysh kael.’ Brief words, short sentences; the king’s speech of late had become wrenchingly laboured, a sorrow to those whose love was constant. ‘You’ll see soon enough. My seneschal objects.’

‘I find the choice commendable, your Majesty.’ Taskin kept tight watch on the foreign prince from Devall, and recorded the masked start of surprise. ‘Until we know what’s happened, we are well advised to call out every resource we can muster.’

The high prince slapped his flattened hands upon the tabletop, but snatched short of shoving to his feet. ‘Then you don’t feel her Grace has played a prank for my embarrassment?’

‘I don’t know, Highness. Her women don’t think so.’ Taskin’s shoulders lifted in the barest, sketched shrug. ‘But Princess Anja being something of a law unto herself, her ladies have been wrong as much as right when the girl played truant as a child.’

The seneschal thrust out his bony, hawk nose, his stick frame bristling with outrage. ‘Well, we don’t need a scandal buzzing through the lower citadel! Find the herald, do. Pull rank at the Highgate, and turn the captain back to mind his garrison.’

‘Too late.’ Already alerted by the sound of inbound footsteps, Taskin’s icy gaze fixed on the seneschal as he let fly his own sly dart. ‘In fact, your service is the one that’s needed elsewhere.’ Two crisp sentences explained the gist behind the courtiers held under the chamberlain’s watchful eye.

‘Your Majesty, have I leave?’ The seneschal bowed, shrewd enough to forgo his sour rivalry for opportunity. He thrust to his feet, his supple, scribe’s hands all but twitching for the chance to wring advantage from the merchants’ pledge of loyalty.

A short delay ensued, while King Isendon of Sessalie raised a palsied forearm and excused the gaunt official from his presence. As the seneschal stalked away, he peered in vague distress at the straight, stilled figure of his ranking guardsman, who now claimed the place left vacant at his right hand. ‘Commander. Do you honestly think we might be facing war?’

‘Your Majesty, that’s unlikely’ Taskin’s candour was forthright. What did Sessalie possess, that could be worth a vicious siege, a campaign supplier’s nightmare, destined to be broken by the early winter storms that howled, unforgiving, through the ranges? Only Anja posed the key to disarm such defences. Threat to her could unlock all three of the citadel’s moated gates without a fight.

Within the royal palace, her loss might break King Isendon’s fragile wits within a week, or a day, or an hour. Prince Kailen lacked the hardened maturity to rein in the fractious council nobles. The seneschal was clever with accounting, but too set in his ways to keep the young blood factions close at heel.

Sessalie needed the sea trade to sweeten the merchants and bolster a cash-poor council through the uncertainty of the coming succession.

Yet the petty slights and tangles spun by court dissension were not for Devall’s ears. Anja’s offered hand must not imply a bleeding weakness, or invite the licence to be annexed as a province.

Lest the pause give the opening to tread dangerous ground, the Commander of the Guard tossed a bone to divert the high prince’s agile perception. ‘The crown needs its eyes and ears in the sewers under Highgate. Captain Mysh kael may be a misbegotten southern mongrel, but he keeps the city garrison trimmed into fighting shape. Knows his job; I checked his background. We want him keen and watchful, and not hackled like a man who’s been insulted.’

The High Prince of Devall drummed irritable fingers, his ruby seal glaring like spilled blood. ‘I don’t give a rice grain if the man’s low born, or the get of a pox-ridden harlot! Let him find Princess Anja, I’ll give him a villa on the river, a lord’s parcel of mature vineyards, and a tax-free stamp to run a winery’

Commander Taskin had no words. His arid glance pricked to a wicked spark of irony, he had eyes only for the man in the plain cloak just ushered through the privy chamber door. The hood he tossed back unmasked his dark skin, the honesty a tactical embarrassment. Yet his brazen pride was not invulnerable. The soft, limping step—worse than Taskin remembered—was strategically eclipsed behind the taller bulk of Collain Herald.

That court worthy trundled to an awkward stop. Scarlet-faced, he delivered the requisite bows to honour vested sovereign and heir apparent. Blindingly resplendent in his formal tabard with its border of gold ribbons, and Sessalie’s falcon blazon stitched in jewelled wire, Collain announced the person the king’s word had summoned.

‘Attend! In his Majesty’s name, I present Mysh kael, Captain of the Garrison.’

II. Audience (#udd66e510-c82c-5fc4-9823-260cbcf5eacc)

AS THE COURT HERALD STRAIGHTENED FROM HIS BOW AND STEPPED ASIDE, MYKKAEL RECEIVED HIS FIRST CLEAR VIEW OF THE COURT FIGURES seated on the dais. They, in turn, measured him, while his tactician’s survey noted the Prince of Devall’s suppressed flinch. Apparently the princess’s suitor had not expected dark colouring, a commonplace reaction in the north. Mykkael gathered his own cursory impression: of smouldering good looks and tasteful, rich clothing, marred by a fine-drawn impatience. The proposed bridegroom seemed genuinely upset by her Grace’s disappearance. His statesman’s bearing showed signs of chafed poise as he paid deference to the reigning king of Sessalie.

As Mykkael must, also, though his war-trained awareness rankled for the fact Commander Taskin slipped away from his post and took position a half-step from his back. Mykkael had witnessed politics and intrigues aplenty, and court appointments far richer than Sessalie’s. Yet where the close proximity of wealth and power seldom ruffled his nerves, the senior guardsman’s presence raised his hackles. He felt newborn naked to be bladeless. Few kings, and fewer statesmen could size up his attributes with that trained killer’s astute eye.

A pinned mouse beneath the commander’s aggressive scrutiny, the garrison captain bowed. Foreigner though he was, his manners were accomplished enough to honour the crowned presence of royalty. Even when that worthy seemed a shrunken, dry armature, clothed over in marten and velvet. Sessalie’s failing monarch might appear weak, might seem as though his jewelled circlet bound the skull of a man with one foot in the grave. Yet tonight, the palsied jut of his chin suggested an aware determination. The eyes Mykkael recalled from his oath-taking were dulled with age, but not blank.

The garrison captain met the king’s wakened wits with the sharp respect he once granted to his war-bond employers. He assumed a patient, listening quiet, prepared to field the caprice of crown authority. Past experience left him wary. A ruler’s bidding could cast his lot on the wrong side of fate, and get every man in his company killed.

The king drew a laboured breath, too infirm to waste time with state language. ‘Captain. You are aware? My daughter, Princess Anja, is nowhere to be found.’

Mykkael inclined his head. ‘Your Majesty,’ he opened, his diction without accent, ‘until now, I had heard only rumours.’

‘You might wish to speak louder,’ the High Prince of Devall suggested with hushed compassion. ‘Of course, you would have tracked down the source of such talk.’

Mykkael paused. The king’s alert posture suggested he had heard very well. Rather than break protocol, the captain settled for a polite nod as acknowledgement that Devall’s heir apparent had addressed him.

Taskin smoothed the awkward moment. ‘This is Sessalie, where the commons have been content for generations. If Captain Mysh kael pursued every snippet of gossip, half the city matrons would be found guilty of treasonous words. His sleep might be broken five times a night, quelling false declarations that King Isendon was laid out on his death bier.’

The old monarch smiled and patted the prince’s elegant wrist. ‘My herald was forbidden from forthright speech.’ A sly, white eyebrow cocked up, while the clouded gaze regarded the officer summoned in for audience. ‘Even if Collain had broken faith, the crown’s bidding left no opening to launch an investigation. Is this so, Captain? You may answer.’

Not deaf, or a fool, King Isendon, despite the clack of public opinion; Mykkael chose honesty. ‘No need to investigate. I witnessed the source of the rumour myself in the course of a routine patrol.’ At the king’s insistence, he elaborated. ‘One of the flower girls is in love with the driver of a slop cart. She went to have her fortune told, hoping for a forecast, or a simple to bind her affection. The mad seer who lives in the alley by the Falls Gate mutters nonsense when she’s drunk. Her cant tonight said the princess was missing, but then, her talk is often inflammatory. Few people take her seriously’

Taskin stirred sharply, and received the king’s nod of leave. ‘You think her words carry weight?’

‘Sometimes her malice takes a purposeful bent.’ Mykkael hesitated, misliking the prompt of his instinct. Yet Taskin’s steely competence warned against trying to shade his explanation with avoidance. ‘I’ve seen her prick holes in folks’ overblown ambitions, or cause ill-suited lovers to quarrel. Occasionally, she’ll expose the shady dealings of a craftsman. Mostly, her ranting is groundless rubbish. But one watches the flotsam cast up by the tide.’

‘You will question this woman,’ commanded the king.

Mykkael raised his eyebrows, moved to tacit chagrin. ‘Majesty I’ll try. Until morning, the old dame will be senseless on gin. Cold sober, she can’t remember the names of her family. I’ll find the slop taker’s sweetheart, if I can, and see whether she recalls something useful.’

The king regarded him, probing for insolence, perhaps. Mykkael thought as much, until some quality to the trembling, lifted chin made him revise that presumption. Those fogged eyes were measuring him with shrewd intellect. Mykkael keenly sensed the authority in that regard, and more keenly still, that of Devall’s heir apparent, edged and growing jagged with concern.

Then Isendon mustered his meagre strength and spoke. ‘Captain, you are the arm of crown law below the Highgate. My daughter has vanished. By my orders, you will do all in your power. Find her. Secure her safety.’

Mykkael bowed, arms crossed at his chest in the eastern style, that gesture of respect an intuitive statement more binding than any verbal promise. He straightened, bristled by a sudden movement at his shoulder.

The Commander of the Guard now flanked his stance at close quarters, no doubt mistaking such silence, perhaps even questioning his professional sincerity. Taskin’s whisper was direct. ‘You will answer to me, on your findings.’

The garrison captain inclined his head, not smiling. He waited until the King of Sessalie granted leave with the gesture of a skeletal hand. The dismissal closed the audience. Yet the gaze of the lowcountry prince did not shift, or soften from burning intensity.