3
Bitharn hid a sigh as the squat cone-topped towers of Thistlestone came into view ahead, rising above the red lace of the autumn wood. Her idyll would end when they reached the town and the heavy weight of responsibility settled back onto Kelland’s shoulders.
Out on the open road, far from the demands of the commonfolk and their lords, she could pretend that the two of them were carefree as summer larks. Kelland could smile, even laugh, without worrying about the dignity of his office. They had no one to impress on the road.
In Thistlestone that would change. He would become a Blessed again, losing himself in his duty without realizing what had happened. And he would need her more than ever, whether he recognized that or not.
The two of them had grown up together as cloister children: babies abandoned on the steps of the Dome of the Sun by mothers who did not want them or could not care for them. It happened every year in Cailan, regular as rain. Girls found themselves pregnant but unmarried, or birthing a baby that too obviously wasn’t the husband’s, or faced with another mouth in a home already hollowed by hunger. The sickly and deformed were left out for alley dogs; no one would take those. The others, if they couldn’t be placed with kin, were left on the doorsteps of guilds or craftsmen. Someplace a child might find mercy, shelter, maybe a chance at learning a trade.
Once in a while a baby went to the steps of honey-gold marble that led to the Dome of the Sun. That was a rare choice, however. The commonfolk said that whoever gave a child to the Bright Lady sacrificed all the rest of their family’s favor, ever after, to buy the goddess’ mercy for that baby. Celestia saw every grief and sin under the sun; daily she was assailed by the prayers of the needy, crying to her from Calantyr to the Sunfallen Kingdoms. But even a goddess couldn’t heal all the world’s ills. There were limits. By asking her to help their children, the parents gave up any further claim to her intercession for themselves. Only the most desperate mothers, or the most devout, left their babies at Celestia’s door.
Bitharn’s mother had made that choice. So had Kelland’s. And so the two of them had grown up closer than siblings, sharing their secrets and wishes and dreams, for neither had anyone else in the world.
Then, early in the spring of their twelfth year, Kelland had heard the Call and Bitharn had not, and the paths of their lives split as neatly as that.
The Blessed were Called. The ordinary were not. That was how the goddess made her will known in the world. Those she chose went to the pillared halls of the Dome for training. There they became yellow-robed Illuminers, tasked with shedding the light of truth across the land, or Sun Knights who protected the weak and dealt justice to outlaws. Those she ignored went . . . elsewhere. Out into the world, mostly. Many chose to take priestly vows and bring Celestia’s word to the people that way, with the authority of a solaros if not the power of a Blessed.
Bitharn had no desire to become a solaros. Instead she stayed at the Dome of the Sun, playing along with whatever lessons the knights would let her share and spending long hours in the bowyard when they shooed her off. She became an oddity: a girl who could outshoot any of the boys and, in time, most of the knights as well. But that was fine, that was better than fine; that made her eccentric, as strange in her way as Kelland was in his.
Even then, when she was barely more than a child, Bitharn had recognized how lonely Kelland’s path would become, and how direly he would need a friend. The Knights of the Sun were respected, revered, a little feared—but they were not befriended. They took the sorrows of others into themselves, but they could admit to none of their own. They stayed neutral in the conflicts of the secular world, and keeping neutral meant keeping a distance. They had no lovers, no confidants, no shoulders to cry on; they were always, always alone.
It was a heavy burden to bear. Perhaps that was why so few were Called.
So she stayed with him. Because he needed her, and because somewhere along the way, while she was playing with her arrows and he was learning the gravity of a graybeard three times his age, her love had changed from that of a child for a friend to that of a woman for a man.
She loved him. And that was an impossible thing. Bitharn would sooner have swallowed her tongue than tell him, and doubted that he knew; but the truth of it was, she’d never leave him. Not back in Calantyr, not in the Sunfallen Kingdoms, not ever.
A fluttering in the air caught her attention. A bird, winging toward the distant castle.
“Pigeon,” Bitharn said, shading her eyes against the glare. Something winked on the pigeon’s leg as it descended toward the castle: a marking band, or a message cylinder, glittering briefly in the sun. It was too far for her to be sure. An instant later the plump gray bird vanished into one of the small round holes that ringed the eastern tower, where, presumably, Lord Eduin Inguilar kept a dovecote to receive it.
“I didn’t see it,” Kelland admitted.
Of course he hadn’t. Bitharn hid her smile. For all his skill at swordplay and prayer, the knight didn’t have her eyes. “It went into a tower,” she told him. “Carrying a message, most likely. It looked like it had something on its leg.”
“Could you tell where it came from?”
She shook her head, doubtful. “I’d guess east if I had to guess something, but it’s hard to tell with the trees.”
“There isn’t much to the east.”
He was right; there wasn’t. Not within a pigeon’s flight, at least. Pigeons were short-range birds, seldom used for carrying messages more than a hundred leagues. Messages that had to go further were entrusted to whitemauks, larger and fiercer birds whose ancestors had been taken from the sea centuries before the Godslayer’s War.
A message on a whitemauk would not have been strange. But a pigeon?
East of Thistlestone was the hostile kingdom of Oakharn. Northeast was proud Mirhain and the trackless shadows of Delverness Wood; southeast, beleaguered and bankrupt Thelyand, followed by the cruel ironlords of Ang’arta and the bloodmages they called Thorns. None of those seemed likely sources for a pigeon, and only Oakharn was close enough to send one. Most probably, the bird had come from somewhere inside Lord Inguilar’s own holding.
“Why wouldn’t they just send a rider?” Bitharn wondered aloud. Thistlestone, like most of these border holds, was a small fief. A rider could reach Lord Inguilar’s castle from any point on its periphery within a day or two.
Kelland shrugged. “Maybe they didn’t have one to spare. Maybe the message was so urgent it couldn’t wait for a rider to deliver it.”
“Or maybe I was wrong about the direction.”
The knight pretended to consider that. “No,” he decided. “You’re never wrong. No doubt we’ll learn the true reason in time.”
“No doubt,” Bitharn agreed, and they rode on.
Ahead the castle town greeted them with a rush of noise and color. Freeriders and hireswords had converged on Thistlestone for the impending Swordsday celebrations. The farmers were in from their fields, the shepherds in from their pastures. Boys with dreams of glory rubbed shoulders with hard-bitten veterans who had long ago lost theirs. Girls with flowers in their hair and embroidered sashes around their waists watched them, giggling and blushing at the ones they favored.
By the standards of Calantyr or Mirhain, the Swordsday festivities at Thistlestone were small and drab. Eastern Langmyr was not a wealthy region, and the constant low-burning war with Oakharn had further depleted the border holds’ treasuries. No golden purses or immortalizing songs waited for the winners here. The hireswords who came to Thistlestone were the sweepings of the Sunfallen Kingdoms: men who were too poor to ride in Mirhain’s great tourneys, too new or unskilled to have a berth with one of the mercenary companies who sold their services year-by-year to kings. They were men for whom victory meant a better horse or a good steel sword, not a thousand silver solis.
Even so, there were far too many people for the castle town to hold them all. Their tents poured out of its gates in a swirl of canvas and leather and the occasional bright blossom of silk. The scent of roasting meat rose from the firepits that dotted the earth between them, and the clamor of a hundred conversations in the Rhaellan trade-tongue. A brindle dog came from somewhere among the tents and trotted after Bitharn’s and Kelland’s horses, yapping.
The dog was their most obvious follower, but it was hardly the only one. Everywhere the Celestians went, heads turned.
They were not looking at her, Bitharn knew. However odd it was to see a woman dressed in huntsman’s clothes and carrying a yew bow across her back, she was perfectly unremarkable next to her companion.
Kelland had the blood of Nebaioth. He had no idea who his parents were, any more than Bitharn did, but they had left him with the legacy of that land. Nebaioth, far to the south, where it was said the sun never set and the heat of endless days baked its people black as charcoal. Nebaioth, land of pearl-strewn beaches and red-quilled lions, where sailors from the northern realms were permitted to enter only a single walled city and were slain on sight if they left it.
It was a strange, exotic place, more legend than land. Kelland had never seen it. He had spent his entire life within the sheltering walls of Cailan’s Dome, praying in its golden cathedral and practicing swordwork in its marbled yards. Yet Nebaioth marked him from half a world away. His skin was the deep brown of vehrwood, his hair pitch-black and tough as wire. He wore it in a mass of tight, sleek braids, each one capped by a white cowrie shell. Bitharn had found a book that said Nebaithene warriors wore their hair in such braids, and books were all either of them knew about that land.
Books and superstitions. Everywhere they went, people believed Kelland’s blood made his magic stronger. They called him the Burnt Knight. It was not a name Kelland ever used for himself, but neither was it one he could escape. The power of the sun was part of his heritage, the commonfolk claimed; of course he was one of Celestia’s Blessed. They begged for his blessings and deferred to his wisdom, even when he had no inkling what the correct answer might be.
At first the commonfolk’s reactions had surprised and embarrassed him—in Cailan he was only another Knight of the Sun, talented but not extraordinary—but over the years Kelland had become resigned to it. His appearance was another tool he could use to serve his goddess. No more, no less.
The Burnt Knight’s unique appearance was part of the reason they had been sent to Langmyr, Bitharn suspected. The High Solaros had never said as much, but it was not hard to read the signs.
For decades the Celestian faith had been trying to end the cycle of bloodletting between Oakharn and Langmyr. The task had taken on greater urgency with the rise of Ang’arta and its Tower of Thorns; kingdoms weakened by internal feuding were easy prey for the ironlords. Yet it was not easy weaning men off their old hatreds, even with a new foe at the door. The Illuminers could cite history’s bloody lessons all they wanted, and Knights of the Sun could talk themselves blue in the face about the tactical futility of conquests across the river, but they could not make anyone listen. The temple had no real right to intervene in the border lords’ affairs, and favoring one side would alienate the other.
All they could do, really, was soothe immediate conflicts and hope that time cooled both sides’ bloodlust. That, Bitharn thought, was why they were here. Celestia’s Blessed acted as a living reminder of her moral and magical force, and the Burnt Knight was more visible than most.
He was a symbol. It was not a role he enjoyed—Kelland had always shied away from the adoration of the commons, to Bitharn’s amused incomprehension—but duty had thrust him into it, and he was never one to shirk duty.
Bitharn, however, was not a symbol, and that meant she was free to do as she liked. Some things, at least.
Thistlestone’s Swordsday competitions were well within her grasp. Not the melee, of course; she was a poor swordfighter at best, and the others would make short work of her once they recovered from the surprise of seeing a woman in the ring. Nor did she have the strength to compete at the stone toss or shield races.
Archery, though … archery was hers.
She scanned the names on the scroll pinned to a post outside the archers’ field. The scribe had a good hand; he had written large and clear, and by the time her horse ambled past she had read all the names and recognized none of them. Smiling to herself, Bitharn settled back in her saddle.
“Planning on entering?” Kelland asked. Amusement warmed his eyes. He could seem forbidding, even dangerous, to strangers who saw him only as one of Celestia’s Blessed. The knight had the grave features of the old kings’ statues: high cheekbones, a wide brow, a mouth more given to frowns than joy. But when he smiled, all the weight of his duties fell away, and he was purely beautiful to her sight.
Bitharn wanted to keep him smiling this last little while. She winked. “Bet on me.”
“You know we aren’t allowed to gamble.”
“It won’t be a gamble,” she assured him, and was rewarded with a laugh.
The memory of that laughter warmed her as she washed off the travel dust in their inn that afternoon. The match would take place in a few hours, shortly before sunset. First she had a little spying to do. Kelland gathered information in the course of his work as a Blessed; Bitharn listened for the rumors and grievances that commonfolk muttered among themselves. Between them, they learned far more than either could alone.
Surreptitious listening required hiding who she was, at least for a while. Bitharn wove her long honey-gold hair into a tight braid and knotted it beneath a cap, bound her breasts tightly to her chest, and pulled on a loose-fitting leather jerkin to cover what the bindings couldn’t hide. A few smudges of dirt on her cheeks disguised their smoothness. She’d never pass for a hard-bitten mercenary, but a fresh-faced boy just off his father’s farm . . .that, with the right cast of voice and clumsy attempts at swagger, she could do.
She hoped so, anyway. The Langmyrne spoke Rhaellan, as did all the people of the Sunfallen Kingdoms. Before the Godslayer’s War, when Rhaelyand was a grand empire, the western kingdoms had been united as its provinces: Langmyr, Oakharn, and all the others, each with its own Prince and crowning castle.
The flower of Rhaelyand died on the Field of Sorrows, over a thousand years ago, in the last battle of the Godslayer’s War. The empire, mortally wounded, fell soon after. The princes became kings, the provinces kingdoms, each one claiming to be the true heir to Rhaelyand’s crown-and-sun. All that truly remained of the old empire, however, were a few fading maps, the hollow name of the Sunfallen Kingdoms, and the two languages it left in this part of the world. Rhaellan, the trade-tongue, which had splintered and diffused so many times that its dialects were near languages in their own right, and High Rhaelic, the tongue of priests and scholars, which was the nearest echo of what Rhaelyand’s original language had been.
Bitharn, like all the children educated at the Dome of the Sun, could speak and read High Rhaelic. She knew a few dialects of Rhaellan, too, but her teachers had hailed from Mirhain and Thelyand, not Langmyr. Here, her accent would mark her as a foreigner at once.
Still, at this time of year, that wouldn’t be so odd. In any other season, the commonfolk might bite their tongues if an outlander came near. But Swordsday brought a flood of glory-hunting foreigners, and there’d be nothing strange about one listening to local gossip today.
By the time she went downstairs, the common room was crowded with competitors, proving her guess correct. Bitharn slipped past a pair of soldiers in well-worn leather armor blazoned with the thorny wreath of Thistlestone. She pressed against the plaster wall, making herself small in the shadows while she gauged the room’s mood.
A trio of archers sat around the smoky fire, cursing and laughing over mugs of sour ale. They wore no lord’s colors, and the mismatched scraps of leather and chain that served as their armor suggested that if they were hireswords, they were not good ones. Next to them was a table of farmers, and next to that four old wives sharing black beer and gossip.
The long bar was more promising. There she saw two men wearing the white blossom of the Brotherhood of the Rose: mercenaries, but ones who claimed to fight for principle as much as coin. They looked well-off, and likely were; Brotherhood mercenaries commanded high prices from employers who valued their gloss of legitimacy along with their skills. Lesser hireswords and locals clustered around them, vying for a moment’s attention. The mercenaries were here to look for promising young talent on the field, but that never stopped anyone from trying to impress them off of it.
They would do nicely. Bitharn pulled down her cap and pushed off the wall, adopting an awkward swagger. She bellied up to the bar and ordered a mug of ale, putting a crack in her voice as she did. The nearest man sniggered, but beyond that no one paid her much mind; a boy getting drunk was nothing worth notice.
“We could use you lot around here,” one of the farmers was saying to the Brotherhood’s men. “Always a need for good swords on the border.”
The Brotherhood mercenary didn’t reply at once, so Bitharn took the opportunity to interrupt. “Isn’t there a peace now?” She took a swig of her ale, too fast on purpose, and coughed on the thick foam.
The farmer gave her a glance and dismissed whatever he saw. “By the sound of your tongue you’re not from here, so I’ll forgive your asking. There’s no peace. Oh, the lords might put on smiles when they meet, and that prancing twit from Oakharn might call Lord Eduins ‘cousin,’ but we who’ve our feet on the ground and our heads out of the clouds know better. We haven’t forgot what they did. My own father marched for revenge against Owlsgrove, and I’d have gone after the Slaver Knight’s friends myself if I hadn’t been cursed with a bad leg.”
“The Slaver Knight?”
The farmer spat on the floor. “Aye. Must’ve been … four years ago, now? Five? The year the rain ruined the harvest.”
“Five years back, that was,” one of the other locals put in.
“Five years, then. That was a long hard winter, no denying, but we Langmyrne came together and shared what we had and made do. The Oakharne, on the other hand …” He spat again. “That for them. The Slaver Knight, he was one of them, one of their brave anointed swords. You can see what those oaths are worth to an Oakharne.
“When they got hungry, they didn’t scrape and struggle to get by. Oh, no. They took their prisoners, their petty thieves and poachers, and sold them to the ironlords for food. All the border lords did it: Owlsgrove, Bulls’ March, even pious Lady Vanegild of Breakwall, who hands out pennies to her peasants at Midwinter. Those pennies came at a dear cost that year. When they’d emptied their dungeons, they took to kidnapping commonfolk—commonfolk from our side of the river. Good, honest men and women whose only sin was living too close to the border, hauled off at swordpoint to face blood sacrifice or the breaking pits or some other horror in Ang’arta.
“Couldn’t keep that secret for long, of course. But when our lords came asking, the Oakharne claimed it was one rogue knight who did it all. Just the Slaver Knight, all on his own. You’d have to be dimmer than old Bollos to believe that, but that’s what they said, straight-faced.”
“The lords believed it, didn’t they?” Bitharn ventured. “If there was no war.”
“Lord Eduin’s too trusting,” the farmer said. “He’s a fair lord, and I’ll not speak ill of him, but he let them off too gently. The Oakharne handed over the Slaver Knight, and Lord Eduin hanged him in the square, aye … but we knew he didn’t act alone. Plenty more out there needing necklaces of their own. There’ll be no peace for the likes of them, whatever the lords say.”
“Seems to me your real grievance is with the ironlords,” Bitharn said. “This Slaver Knight might have handed them the victims, but they’re the ones did the torturing. Am I wrong?”
The farmer hesitated. He glanced at the door, then back at Bitharn, chewing at the corner of his lip. “No. They’ve got no grievance with us, and we’ve none with them, far off as they are. No reason to go looking for more trouble when we’ve got enough on our doorstep. That sort of thing … that’s for the lords to decide, anyway. Not the likes of you or I.”
“Not afraid of them, are you?” one of the Brotherhood mercenaries asked, amused. He was a rangy man, no longer a youth but not quite grown into the fullness of his body. About her age, Bitharn guessed: a year or two past twenty. “The Iron Crown’s soldiers are only men. They die like any other, and deserve it more than most.”
“Not afraid,” the farmer said stubbornly. “But I don’t see no need to go stirring up a hornets’ nest neither. Let them lie, I say. We’ve enemies enough here.”
The wrong ones, Bitharn thought, but she stayed quiet. She sipped her ale and listened while the others talked.
Most of the talk centered around the upcoming competitions: who was likely to win, lose, break an arm or lose a tooth. One of the Brotherhood mercenaries had entered the melee, she gathered, and any man who met and bested him in the fray was welcome to ride with them back to Craghail, where he might find a berth with their company. The Brotherhood was looking for new blood, having filled its coffers and thinned its ranks after two seasons’ fighting the ironlords among the war-wracked ruins of Thelyand.
There was a local boy favored to win the stone toss, as he had the past three years. Vosric the Northborn, they called him, though he had been birthed in Thistlestone and lived in the castle’s shadow all his life. He had the blood of the White Seas through his father—the boy was a bastard born the summer after another Swordsday long ago—and it showed in his height, his white-blond hair, and strength that made the town blacksmith look like a stripling boy. He’d do well as an armsman, all agreed, though he’d never shown any interest in the arts of war. The Brotherhood mercenaries looked disappointed to hear that; White Seas men made prized warriors, and even a half blood had promise.
The last bit of gossip concerned an Oakharne knight who had come across the border with his retinue to pay his respects at Thistlestone. Sir Galefrid was the eldest son of the lord of Bulls’ March, evidently, and was said to be eager to establish a peace. The locals gathered around the bar scoffed at this notion, and scoffed harder still when one boy suggested timorously that perhaps Sir Galefrid intended to pay reparations for what the Slaver Knight had done.
“He’ll not pay,” the first farmer said. “They’ll never pay. Not like they deserve.”
Bitharn listened to his grumblings with half an ear. A hooded figure at the periphery of the crowd had drawn her attention. A woman, she guessed; the figure wore a muffling cloak, too heavy for the weather, but its loose folds failed to hide a certain litheness of body, or the hip-swaying grace of her walk. The hooded woman had been sitting alone at first, but when the conversation around the bar shifted to Sir Galefrid’s visit, she’d drained her wine and sidled forward, lingering at the crowd’s edge.
Eventually the talk turned to the archery competition. Bitharn listened just long enough to learn that the previously favored contender had recently lost a hand for poaching Lord Isarach’s black-antlered stags, and that a mercenary calling himself Anslak Bluefire claimed to have magic arrows that would deliver him victory. The discussion swiftly devolved into an argument over whether Bluefire’s magic arrows were real, and whether it would be a fair match if they were, so Bitharn finished her ale and stepped back from the bar.
All things were possible in the world, if the Bright Lady willed, so magic arrows might exist somewhere … but she had never seen any, and no one would waste such treasures on a minor Swordsday contest. This Bluefire was a fool or a fraud, and nothing to worry her either way.
As she slipped through the commons back to the stairs, Bitharn heard soft footfalls behind her and glanced back. The hooded woman was following her. She hesitated, touching the hilt of her belt knife, then chided herself for a fool and kept walking. There was no reason for anyone here to wish her harm. Most likely the woman was going to her own room. At worst, she might have seen through Bitharn’s disguise and hoped to reach Kelland through her. Whatever she wanted, it was unlikely to put anyone in danger.
But she kept her hand on the knife hilt, and nearly drew it when the hooded woman approached in the shadowed hall upstairs.
“I would speak to you,” she said. “In private.” Her voice was soft, little more than a whisper, and carried the melodic accent of Ardasi nobility. It was faint, as if she’d had decades to adapt her speech to the northern courts, but there was no mistaking it.
Bitharn nodded, cautious but curious, and unlocked her door.
Once inside, the other woman lowered her cowl. She was an older woman, petite and quick-moving as a bird, with the honey-colored complexion common to the southern Empire. Strands of silver shimmered in her soft black curls, and fine lines netted the corners of her dark eyes, but age had refined her beauty rather than diminishing it.
She was dressed in simple linen and wore not a single jewel, but she needed no ornaments to tell who she was. There was only one Ardasi noblewoman in Thistlestone: Lady Isavela Inguilar, Lord Eduin’s wife.
“My lady.” Bitharn curtsied. How may I serve? she almost asked, but caught the words on the tip of her tongue. She might not want—or be able—to serve at all. She certainly could not promise that Kelland would, and the lady’s request would doubtless be of the Blessed, not his companion. Skilled as she was, Bitharn did not flatter herself that Lady Isavela had come to talk to an archer. “To what do I owe this honor?” she asked instead.
“Do you hope for peace?” Lady Isavela said bluntly, holding her gaze.
Bitharn blinked. She looked away, uneasy despite herself. “Of course.”
The lady nodded. “So do we. It is a hope that we have nurtured longer than you have been alive, child. You heard the men talking about Vosric downstairs?”
Child? Bitharn bit her tongue and nodded.
“His mother was Oakharne. She fled her family when she learned she was pregnant; they had never been kind, and she feared their wrath if she bore a bastard under their roof. She was so afraid that she crossed the river and came here. I took her in as a washerwoman and told the town that she was part of my retinue. It explained her accent, her unfamiliarity with local custom. If anyone suspected the lie, they did not challenge it.
“In time Vosric was born, and when he was old enough, his mother gave him the truth. Because of it, he shunned the sword and refused to join my lord’s army. He could have been a great warrior; you saw how quickly the Brotherhood of the Rose realized that. In another life he might have worn the thistle-wreath and slaughtered his cousins, or signed with one of the mercenary Companies and ravaged our lands. Instead he turned toward peace. He has a way with animals; he will make a fine huntsman or stablemaster someday.
“We have a thousand stories like that. Little seeds that my husband and I planted over the years, hoping that in our lifetimes we might see an end to this pointless enmity. I would never have agreed to live here, would never have married him, if Eduin hadn’t convinced me it was possible.” Lady Isavela smiled sadly. “I’m sorry to be so long-winded. The reason I tell you this is because a storm is coming that threatens to tear away all our little seeds. If we do not avert it, everything we’ve spent our lives building will be lost. People’s lives will be destroyed. Not just the ones who die fighting, but lives like Vosric’s. The ones who could have been—who want to be—something else.”
“What do you want from me?” Bitharn asked.
“You’re close to the Burnt Knight. Tell him … ask him to visit us tonight. Please. I know the Bright Lady’s faith takes no sides in the disputes between Langmyr and Oakharn, but what we would ask is nothing like that. All we want is your help avoiding war.”
“How?”
Lady Isavela shook her head, lifting the hood over her face as she backed to the door. “There is no short answer to that question. Come to us this evening, and I will explain.”
The door closed. After a while Bitharn stirred from her thoughts and glanced out the tiny, bubbled-glass window. The day had moved on without her; it was nearly time for the match. She collected her bow from the room’s corner and made her way down to the field.
Most of the competitors were already there. They traded jests and insults while spectators gathered around the bundles of hay that set out the limits of the field. A vendor in a robin-red cloak strolled around the crowd, hawking roast chickens on a long steel spit. His young son trotted after him, carrying a cloth-covered bread basket. For an extra penny, the chickens came on a thick slice of bread; otherwise the vendor simply dropped his birds into his buyers’ hands. Bitharn’s stomach rumbled, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten since her last bowl of porridge after dawn prayers. Too late: she could hardly get her fingers covered in chicken grease now.
Hay-stuffed dummies stood at the far end of the field. Each was painted with a series of concentric circles to measure the archers’ scores. The largest ring was the width of a whitemelon, the smallest the size of a plum. In Ang’arta, it was said, they used live captives for targets, and aimed for the groin before the heart. From what she’d heard of the ironlords, that might even be true.
Most of the competitors used the maple and elm flatbows common to this part of the Sunfallen Kingdoms. The three archers she’d seen at the inn had heavy yew longbows; their weapons looked strong enough to send an arrow through Mirhaine plate, and probably had pulls to match. Bitharn’s bow was yew as well, but far lighter; she hadn’t the strength to manage a shoulder-breaker like those. Speed and accuracy would have to serve instead.
The mercenary who called himself Anslak Bluefire was the last to take the field. He strode out in a cloak of fluttering blue patches cut to resemble dancing flames. Silver coins glinted in the center of each flame. His bow and arrows were dyed to match, and when he drew an arrow to take his first shot, Bitharn saw that the head was grooved and filled with gray-blue powder.
She hid a smile, readying her own shot.
“Nock and loose!” the herald cried, and Bitharn let her arrow fly. A gasp came from the crowd as the rush of air ignited the smokepowder hidden in Anslak’s arrow, turning his shot into a bright blue comet that trailed sparks halfway across the field. The man’s accuracy matched his showmanship; his arrow thudded squarely into the black, still smoking. Bitharn sank hers into the center of her own target, while the other competitors struck yellow or grazed red.
Three times the herald cried, and three times Bitharn hit the black. Anslak matched her shot for shot, loosing arrows that flew in arcs of green and gold and teal-blue fire, thrumming into the center every time. One by one the other competitors dropped out, until only Bitharn and the blue-cloaked mercenary were left on the field.
Two boys ran out and grabbed the targets, moving them still farther back. The last round counted speed as much as precision. It required three shots, not one, and taking too long to aim counted the same as missing altogether.
There was no wind. That helped. Bitharn drew a long breath, tucked loose strands of hair behind her ears, and let her focus narrow to her bow, the row of arrows plunged into the earth by her feet, and the black ring on the distant target. Nothing else existed: not the roar of the crowd, not Anslak Bluefire with his absurd cloak and theatrics, not the westering sun that threw sideways shadows across the field and played tricks on her eyes.
The boys cleared the field.
“Nock and loose!”
Even before the last word ended, all three of her arrows were in flight … and so, too, were Bluefire’s, weaving across one another in a hissing braid of fire. Her arrows landed in a tight, precise cluster. So did his.
The boys ran down the field. One wrapped his hand around Bitharn’s clustered arrows; the other did the same for Anslak’s. The boys conferred, changed places, conferred again. Then one of them pulled Bitharn’s arrows from the target and held them aloft in a steel-tipped bouquet, signifying that she had won.
A roar came from the crowd. Anslak sketched a performer’s bow, sweeping his cloak out in a glittering wave as he conceded defeat, and strode over to clasp Bitharn’s hand.
Up close he was older than she’d thought; he could have been her father. The corners of his mouth were creased by the tracks of countless smiles, and his gray-blue eyes shone with mirth, making him handsome despite a crooked nose. “Congratulations,” he told her, clasping her hand and forearm in an old-fashioned soldier’s greeting.
“You would have won if you’d used plain arrows,” Bitharn said.
She’d only noticed it on the longer arcs, but his fiery arrows wavered as they flew. Bitharn couldn’t tell whether it was due to a change in the bodkins’ weight as the smokepowder burned away, or was caused by the streaming sparks somehow interfering with the arrows’ flight, but it was clear that something about the smokepowder arrows hampered their accuracy. If not for that, Anslak might well have bested her.
“No.” The mercenary grinned. His teeth were good and very white. “I would have lost anyway. But I don’t regret it. The commonfolk like a show, and I can’t be too sorry about defeat at the hands of the Burnt Knight’s companion. It was a worthy match, my lady.” He bowed again and walked away, leaving her momentarily flustered. Was everyone going to see through her disguise today?
“Tharn of Cailan!” the herald shouted, announcing her false name as the victor.
That was her signal. Bitharn turned to the crowd, lifted her cap, and shook her hair free of its braid. At the same time she wiped the smudges from her cheeks, showing herself to be the girl she was. “Bitharn of Cailan, good sir!” she called back. “Late of the Dome of the Sun!”
Another roar came from the crowd, this time followed by a sea of whispers as people asked their neighbors what had happened and those more knowledgeable explained who she was. As the recognition spread, a final wave of applause went through the commons. Bitharn held her hands out to her sides and bowed.
Kelland was walking toward her when she straightened. She hadn’t seen him in the crowd; he must have arrived as the match ended. The dying sun struck fire from his gilded mail and made his snowy tabard glow, but his smile outshone it all.
Her heart beat faster at the sight of him. It always did. Bitharn busied herself pulling up her unused arrows and knocking the dirt from their heads. She stole glances at him with every step. By the time he reached her, the last arrow was long in her quiver.
“Congratulations,” Kelland said, clasping her shoulders.
Heat rose in her cheeks at his touch. It only lasted a moment before he let go, but that was long enough to set her skin burning. Bitharn ducked her head to hide it, wondering if he could hear her heart thundering through her leather jerkin. “Did you bet on me?” she asked, when she thought her voice could be trusted.
“I did.” He held out a handful of silver solis to show her.
Bitharn whistled. She’d seen the odds. They’d been generous, but not that generous. He must have bet half his money. “I thought that was a sin.”
“You told me it wouldn’t be a gamble. If there was no gamble, there was no sin.”
“I was wrong about that,” she admitted. “The fellow in the blue cloak nearly outshot me.” She glanced over her shoulder, but Anslak was already gone.
“Then I shall make penance in my prayers,” Kelland said gravely, though his dark eyes twinkled. “Come. It’s nearly sunset.”
She walked with him to the clearing’s end. Downfield, town boys carried away the hay-stuffed dummies and searched for stray arrows. The crowd gradually dispersed, recounting the day’s entertainment and looking forward to the morrow’s.
Together, Bitharn and Kelland prayed on the trampled grass. Most Celestians prayed in silence, their knees bent and their hands clasped. Parishioners might chant responses to a solaros’ liturgy, or sing with the choir in chapel, but when they prayed alone in the sunlight, they simply knelt without words.
For the Knights of the Sun it was different. Dawn, highsun, and dusk prayers each had their own ancient, ritualized sequences of movements and poses designed to strengthen the body while centering the soul. All were performed with solemn grace, almost as dances meant to honor the goddess. The Illuminers had similar rites, but theirs were not as demanding as the Sun Knights’. The Bright Lady’s warriors had to be strong, physically as well as spiritually, and their prayers were designed to make them so.
Bitharn was not a Knight of the Sun, but she had learned their practices while living at the Dome, and she was always glad to pray with Kelland. The stances and precise, demanding transitions required all her concentration, freeing her thoughts from the day’s worries. Afterward she always felt at peace, serene in her goddess and herself.
She bent double, brushed her fingertips along the grass, and straightened at the waist, bringing her hands up in a wide arc and over her head. Slowly she let them sink to her chest, folding them over her heart for a moment of meditative prayer. Beside her Kelland mirrored the movements with the same practiced fluidity. They stood there for a while, neither willing to break the calm, until finally Bitharn made herself speak.
“The Lady of Thistlestone requested a private audience,” she said. “Tonight.”
“Why?”
“She wouldn’t tell me. Only that she needed our help to avert war.”
He considered it. “It cannot hurt to listen. Let us see what Lady Inguilar might say.”
The castle guards must have been expecting them, for they found Thistlestone’s postern gate open. A serving girl in a green wool dress waited between the two guards at the door. As Kelland and Bitharn drew near, she greeted them with a curtsy.
“You honor this house with your presence,” the girl said. “Please, follow me.”
She led them up a spiral of cramped and winding stairs, down a narrow hallway, and through a scarred oak door thicker than the length of Bitharn’s hand. Broad iron nails glinted where past attackers had battered at the door with swords and axes, beating through the wooden facade only to dull their weapons on the crisscrossed studs underneath. It did not seem any had broken through.
There was nothing threatening about their guide, yet Bitharn was acutely conscious of the murder holes that pocked the walls, the irregular stumble steps on the stairs, and the sharp teeth of the recessed iron gates that hung overhead, waiting to come crashing down at every bend. Thistlestone was a squat, ugly, practical fortification, built so that every foot of its halls would have to be wrested from its defenders.
Unlike the castles of Calantyr or Mirhain, which sometimes let their gates rust open, Thistlestone was immaculate. Not a speck of corrosion softened the spikes of its killing gates. Bitharn shivered as she walked beneath them, and afterward kept her eyes straight ahead.
Past a second nail-studded door, the halls widened and grew smoother. Iron sconces lined the walls; above them, pillars of soot striped the walls. Tiny windows offered glimpses of blue twilight between the torches’ smoky flames.
The girl turned down one last corridor, knocked on a door, and announced: “Sir Kelland and Bitharn of Cailan, my lord.”
“Marvelous. Please, come in,” said a voice from inside.
The girl opened the door, curtsied again, and closed it behind them as the two Celestians entered.
They found themselves in a solar. Tapestries hung on the walls, depicting scenes of carnage from some battle Bitharn did not know. The bloody images were jarring against the rest of the room, which showed a gentler, more cultivated touch. Glassed windows overlooked the castle’s inner courtyard. Dwarf lemon trees and glossy-leaved peppers grew in ceramic pots, filling the air with subtle fragrance and speaking of a southern touch. Those plants were not native to Langmyr, and likely couldn’t survive its winters. They had to have been imported from the south, and Bitharn thought it spoke well of Lord Inguilar that he was willing to bear the cost of bringing plants from Ardashir to comfort his wife with the scents of her homeland. She wouldn’t have expected a lord living in this castle to be so indulgent.
A table was set with tea, fruit, bread and cheese near the center of the room. No wine or meat, Bitharn noted approvingly; their hosts knew, and respected, that such things were forbidden to the Blessed.
Lady Isavela Inguilar and an older man, richly dressed in fine green wool and gray foxfur, sat near the table. The man would be Lord Eduin, she supposed; no one else was likely to be wearing a gold circlet in his castle. He was thin and smooth-faced, carrying himself with a reserved courtesy only partly undercut by the sharpness of his gray-green eyes. There were no servants in the room.
“Be welcome,” the Lady said, standing and lifting her hands to her guests. “I know you must be hungry.”
“Thank you,” Kelland said. The Celestians filled their plates and took the empty chairs, and for a while they talked of pleasant and inconsequential things. The Lord and Lady of Thistlestone were gracious hosts, and endlessly interested in the details of the Burnt Knight’s past travels. To Bitharn’s surprise, they seemed as curious about her exploits as his, and their interest was never merely polite. They genuinely wanted to know about everything, and though Bitharn tried to avoid subjects that touched too close to her temple’s interests, she was uneasily certain that she gave away more than she meant to.
Finally, when the food was eaten and the conversation at a lull, Lord Eduin cleared his throat. “We did not invite you purely out of politeness,” he said, exchanging a glance with his wife. “In fact, I’m about to be very rude. We have a favor to ask of you.”
“We need your help.” Lady Isavela clasped her jeweled hands in her lap. “This morning we had a bird from the border. One of our villages, Willowfield, has been … extinguished.”
“Extinguished?” Kelland leaned forward.
“The village itself stands, if our information is accurate,” Lord Eduin said. “But every man, woman and child who lived there is a corpse. The people of Willowfield were not the only ones to die. Sir Galefrid of Bulls’ March—Lord Ossaric’s heir—and his entire retinue died with them.”
“How?” Bitharn asked.
“Some by arrows, but most by sorcery. The same sorcery that killed hundreds at Thelyand Ford and holds King Merovas in terror still.”
“Thorns.” The word escaped as a hiss through Kelland’s teeth. Bitharn tensed, glancing at him uneasily, but the knight was focused on Lady Isavela’s story and did not notice her look. Brooding, Bitharn sipped her tea.
She didn’t know much about the Thorns. No one did. They were blessed by Kliasta, the Pale Maiden, as the Sun Knights and Illuminers were blessed by Celestia, and they were an ancient enemy of the faith. But the details of their beliefs, and the magics at their command, had long ago fallen from history into myth. Their religion had been extirpated in the west nearly a thousand years before, and had only recently returned under the protection of Ang’arta’s armies. The new Lord Commander of Ang’arta, the one called the Golden Scourge, had brought the Pale Maiden’s faith back with his wife from the east. Thelyand Ford was the first time in centuries that anyone in this part of the world had seen the Thorns unleashed, and it had been a slaughter.
That was virtually everything Bitharn knew about them, but it was enough. If there was a Thornlord in Langmyr, then Kelland was likely the only person within a hundred leagues who could hope to match him. Steel alone was a poor answer to magic, and there were no other Knights of the Sun closer than Thelyand.
But why would there be a Thorn in Langmyr?
Lady Isavela inclined her head to Kelland. “You begin to see our dilemma, and our danger. Sir Galefrid and his retinue were guests on our land. We had hoped, by inviting him, to build a friendship between our lords and thereby strengthen the peace between Oakharn and Langmyr. We believed he shared our goals. But now he is dead, and dead by bloodmagic worked on Langmyrne soil. His wife and infant son are dead with him. Once word escapes, there will be war, and all the little seeds we worked so long to nurture will go up in flame.” She gestured to the tapestries hanging on the walls. “Our world will go back to this.”
“What would you have us do?”
“Investigate,” the Lady answered. “Who committed the massacre in Willowfield? Why? The Thorns are the likeliest culprits, I agree, but … why would they bother? We are too far from their territory to be of interest, and Willowfield had no strategic importance. Why would Ang’arta send one of its Thornlords here?”
“If it was a Thornlord,” Lord Eduin cautioned her. “There are other dark powers in the world. It might have been one of Anvhad’s Blessed, or one of Maol’s trying to sow chaos. They might have spells similar to the Thorns’. Who can say? The immediate danger, regardless of who actually committed the murders, is that Lord Ossaric will seek vengeance before proof. He loved his son dearly, and the babe was his only grandchild.”
The white shells in Kelland’s hair clicked softly as he nodded. He looked pensive. “Why us? Because of who we are, or what we are?”
“Both,” Lord Eduin said frankly. “None of our men would be believed. Lord Ossaric would assume they were lying to hide our guilt. He knows that game well; he played it with the Slaver Knight. We need someone whose honesty and neutrality are above dispute. Celestia’s Blessed are famously impartial, and the Burnt Knight is already half a legend in Langmyr. I won’t deny we’re trying to make use of that. But we also want you. You’re clear-sighted, careful, sensible. Your account of your travels showed that—as did your companion’s observations on the archery field.”
Bitharn squinted at him. “Anslak Bluefire.”
“Was one of my men, yes,” Lord Eduin admitted. “Sir Taledain is the best archer in Thistlestone. I wanted to see if you were as good as the stories said. He sacrificed his beard to the cause, and used a gaudy cloak and smokepowder arrows to distract anyone who might have known him. He managed to prove that your eyes are very sharp indeed.”
“Thank you,” Bitharn said, at once flattered and vaguely unsettled. “But why?”
“For the same reason I watched you in the tavern,” Lady Isavela replied. “The same reason we had another trusted servant shadow Kelland as he tended to sick villagers in the square. We wanted to learn who you were. We’ve learned to be cautious in placing our trust, especially in matters this delicate.”
“Plan for the best, prepare for the worst,” Bitharn murmured, thinking of Thistlestone’s brutal, layered defenses.
“Precisely,” Lady Isavela said. “Will you help us?”
Kelland hesitated. He glanced at Bitharn, who nodded, and then back to the two nobles. “I am truthbound,” he told them. “Whatever I find—whoever it incriminates—must become known, if I do this.”
“We expect no less,” Lord Eduin said.
Kelland bowed his head. “Then our answer is yes.”