“Of course, Highness.” She gave another perfect bow as he left. Vaelin remained seated.
“May I sit, my lord?” Derla asked him.
He said nothing so she took the seat opposite. “Quite a treat for me to meet so distinguished a Lordship as yourself,” she went on. “Done business with lords aplenty of course. His Highness is always interested in their habits, the more beastly the better.”
Vaelin said nothing.
“Are all the stories about you true, I wonder?” she continued. “Seeing you now I think they might be.” She waited for him to speak and fidgeted in discomfort when he gave no reply. “The baking widow is taking her time with those cakes.”
“The cakes aren’t coming,” Vaelin told her. “And I don’t have any questions. He left you here so I would kill you.”
He met her eyes, seeing genuine emotion there for the first time: fear.
“The widow Nornah is no doubt skilled in the quiet disposal of corpses,” he elaborated. “I expect he's led quite a few unsuspecting fools here over the years. Fools like the two of us.”
Her eyes flicked to the door then back to his. Her mouth twisted, biting back challenges and provocation. She knew she couldn’t brawl with him. “I am not defenceless.”
“You keep a knife in your bodice and another at the small of your back. I assume the pin in your hair is fairly sharp too.”
“I have served King Janus loyally and well for five years - ”
“He doesn’t care. The knowledge you possess is too dangerous.”
“I have money…”
“I have no need of riches.” The bag holding the bluestone was heavy on his belt. “No need at all.”
“Well.” She leaned back from the table, letting her hands fall to her side, lifting her skirts to show her parted knees, another half-smile playing on her lips, no more genuine than the first. “At least show me the courtesy of fucking me before rather than after.”
A laugh died on his lips. He looked away, clasping his hands together on the table top. “You’re safe from me but not from him. You should leave the city, the Realm if you can. Don’t ever come back.”
She rose slowly, moving cautiously to the door, reaching for the handle, her other hand behind her back, no doubt clutching her knife. Turning the handle, she paused, “Your father is fortunate in his son, my lord.” And she was gone, the door swinging closed on poorly oiled hinges.
“I have no father,” he said softly to the empty room.
Chapter 3
Away from the Alpiran coast scrubland gave way to broad trackless desert, swept by a stiff southerly wind that stirred the sands into funnels of dust, drifting over the dunes like wraiths. The army kept to the fringes of the desert, advancing towards Untesh in a column more than two miles long. Watching the army Vaelin was reminded of a great snake he had once seen slip from a cage on a ship from the Far West, it had stretched across the width of the deck, scales glittering in the sun like the spears of the Realm Guard now.
He was perched on a rock studded rise a few miles ahead of the main column, drinking from his canteen whilst Spit chewed at the meagre leaves of a desert shrub nearby. Frentis and his scout troop, what was left of them after the battle near the beach, were encamped about the rise, keeping watch on the eastern horizon.
He thought of the battle two days ago, of the white-clad man and the party that came to ask for his body, four stern faced men of the Imperial Guard who appeared out of the desert and demanded to see the Battle Lord. Al Hestian rode out to greet them with the luminaries of the army in tow, making a show of formal etiquette which the Alpirans ignored by staying in their saddles. He was reading out the king’s proclamation of formal annexation of the three cities of Untesh, Linesh and Marbellis when one of the guardsmen cut him off in mid-sentence, a well-built man with ash-grey hair, speaking near perfect Realm tongue: “Save your prattle, Northman. We come for the Eruhin’s body. Give it to us or kill us, we won’t leave without it.”
Al Hestian’s composure faltered, his face flushing with anger. “What is this Eruhin?”
“The man in white,” Vaelin said. He hadn’t been asked to join the parley but had reined in on the fringes anyway, knowing the Battle Lord wouldn’t wish to make a scene by sending him away, not at such an auspicious moment as his first meeting with the enemy. “The Eruhin, yes?” he asked the guardsman.
The guardsman’s eyes locked on to him, scanning him from head to toe, searching his face. “It was you? You slew him?”
Vaelin nodded. Snarling, one of the other guardsmen half-drew his sabre before the grey-haired man restrained him with a harsh order.
“Who was he?” Vaelin asked.
“His name was Seliesen Maxtor Aluran,” the guardsman replied. “The Eruhin, the Hope in your language. Chosen heir of the Emperor.”