Queen of Fire

She returned to Alltor with five hundred men and fifty women in tow, all volunteers willing to march at the Blessed Lady’s command. There could have been a thousand of them but they had neither the provisions or packhorses to supply so many. The lands south of Alltor had been richest in recruits and willing ears for her lie, having suffered much at the hands of Volarian raiding parties. They had fought a minor war of their own among the Cold Iron’s forested banks and tributaries and were rich in captured weapons. According to Arentes the region had always been the heartland of Cumbraelin archery, the first longbows being hewn from the yews that proliferated in the thick forest. In the face of the Volarian threat long-defunct companies, once the backbone of Cumbraelin military strength, had re-formed under veteran captains, fighting a deadly game of chase among the trees for months until Alltor’s relief.

 

Reva ordered the companies to stay in formation and gather more strength before mustering at Alltor in the spring. For all the fierceness of their commitment she found them a disconcerting lot, hard-eyed and grim of aspect, the many rotting bodies of captured Volarians hanging in the forest evidence of a lust for vengeance far from sated. What will they wreak when we sail the ocean? she wondered, searching her memory in vain for a passage in any of the Ten Books that gave succour to vengeful thoughts.

 

Ellese greeted her with a fierce joy, thin arms tight around her waist as she complained of Veliss’s endless lessons. “She makes me read every morning and every night. And write too.”

 

“Skills of great importance,” Reva told her, gently undoing her arms. “Still, I have a few to teach you too, in time.”

 

Ellese’s small face frowned up at her, the gauntness now gone though she retained a slightly sunken look to her eyes. “What skills?”

 

“The bow and the knife. The sword too when you get older. Only if you want to.”

 

“I want to.” She gave an excited jump, taking Reva’s hand and dragging her towards the mansion. “Teach me now!”

 

Reva caught the grave expression on Veliss’s face and hauled the girl to a halt. “Tomorrow,” she said. “I have another task today.”

 

? ? ?

 

“Still no name for me?”

 

The broken-nosed priest cast a single, tired glance at her and shook his head. They were lined up on the causeway, twelve men in threadbare clothing, besmirched from their captivity in the mansion’s cellars, some swaying a little as the effects of Veliss’s various herbal concoctions could linger for days. The notes she had accrued during the interrogations were fulsome, near five hundred pages of names, dates, meetings, murders, enough to see the Church of the World Father revealed as a nest of traitors from Reader to Bishop, perhaps enough to shatter it completely.

 

“He really thought he could do it?” Reva asked the nameless priest. “Bring down House Mustor and rule the fief in the Father’s name?”

 

The priest raised his head, swallowing as he mustered his courage. “A holy endeavour, blessed by the Father.”

 

“Blessings spoken by a wretch in service to a creature of the Dark.” Reva stepped back, raising her voice and casting her gaze across each face. “You are fools, so steeped in the Ten Books you can’t even see the truth they hold. The Father does not bless deception and murder, the Father does not offer succour to those who would torment children to vile ends.”

 

She fell silent, feeling it build again, the same rage that had seized her during the siege, the fury that had seen her slit the throats of slavers and cut the heads from prisoners. The nameless priest shuddered, swallowing again as he fought down terror-born vomit. Arentes stood behind the shackled line with a full company of House Guard, swords drawn, each of them glaring at the traitors with an expression of grim hunger.

 

We are all killers now, she remembered. Bathed in blood with more to come. Her gaze lit upon a familiar figure at the end of the line, a wiry man, unlike the others in his willingness to meet her gaze, his visage oddly reverent. Shindall, she recalled. The innkeeper who had set her on the road to the High Keep. Seeing your face is the only thanks I’ll ever need.

 

Reva took the scroll tucked into her belt, holding it up so they could see the seal and the somewhat unsteady signature. “By order of the Holy Reader you are all named as ex-communicants from the Church of the World Father. You are forbidden from reading or reciting any of the Ten Books as you have proved yourselves unworthy of the Father’s love.” She looked once again at the broken-nosed priest. “And I know your name since the Father doesn’t want it, Master Jorent.”

 

She watched them close their eyes, heads bowing, some whispering prayers, one or two weeping with stains on their trews, much like the Volarian prisoners before being led to the block, though they hadn’t prayed, only begged.

 

“Lord Arentes,” Reva said. “Remove the shackles. Let them go.”

 

? ? ?

 

Veliss hadn’t voiced any rebuke, only puzzlement. “They plotted against your house once, what’s to stop them doing so again?”

 

“A plot requires concealment, hidden names, hidden faces. Now they are denied the shadows.”

 

“And you have denied yourself justice.”

 

“No, only revenge. The Father has ever been clear they are not the same thing.”

 

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